Fiction – Page 16 – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #56A: “Tracing an Original Thought” by Novae Caelum

It’s like this: if the world has a food shortage, you eliminate hunger by leaving the planet, taking all your animals and plants in your genetic ark, and finding a new planet on which to grow and flourish.

It’s also like this: if the world has a distribution of wealth crisis, you eliminate poverty by never having elites in your new society. At least for a little while. At least, that was the plan.

And if the world has a gender crisis, an inability for equality, you eliminate gender.

You eliminate sex. The need for physical reproduction. Genetic disease. Gender politics.

You eliminate.

And then maybe you’d live in Arioth, city under the vast hanging visage of a ringed gas giant, black towers that reach for the stars, portal tubes flicking citizens from building top to street corner to corner office.

I’m not one of the elites. They lounge in their penthouses, looking down at their domains, moving the tides of originality. They own the artisans, the writers, the thinkers, the scientists—the hearts, the minds, the souls—all valuable trade commodities. Original thoughts, a groundbreaking currency. The first time you have an original thought, you’re a slave of the elites for life.

I decided long ago to never have an original thought. Which is why I became a tracer, hunting the original thinkers who have the very unoriginal idea of running away from their fates.

On a dingy street corner smelling of rotten garbage, where red marks mottled the concrete from the last clearing of a shack village, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, flipping up the eight-centimeter cylinder to activate the holographic display. It unfolded with a cheery chime and showed me a map of the city district in blue lines to the edge of the biodome, which was about a half kilometer from where I was standing.

It also showed me the path my target had taken, a haphazard red weave through streets and alleyways. Did they think they could lose me? Everyone in Arioth was genetically tagged since before emergence. Every child, traceable in every way since the time cells hit cells and became more cells, replicating in the gestation pods. You couldn’t run, not as a toddler, not as an adult. Tracers didn’t have to have original thoughts, because the most strenuous part about being a tracer was the violence, not the tracing itself.

Except.

I scrolled the holo to follow my target’s trail, but it went to a street corner in a particularly seedy district and stopped. I stared at the red dot on my display. It wasn’t blinking as it should have been. And it wasn’t white like it would have been if they’d died. Just solid red staring back at me, like they’d stopped themself somewhere between life and death. That little dot with the name “Emin 4892” beside it.

I’d been a tracer for six years, and I’d never seen a dot do that.

I slapped my phone against my neatly pressed jeans, hoping to jolt out any malfunction. The tracer department was not a department that had a lot of originality, and therefore not a lot of chance for technical upgrades. This phone was at least ten years old and buggy as hell.

The red dot remained, though.

I sighed, shoving down my growing unease. I’d have to investigate—following procedures, of course. Not with anything like original thought.

I had my personal numbers and stats in my vision at all times, eyes opened or closed. Everyone did. We saw our names—mine was “Gin 8381.” We saw our physical attributes—cropped brown hair, mid-brown skin, green eyes. Average height, below average weight. We saw our vitals—fit and healthy. We saw, when we were adults, when it was time to visit a clinic and let them harvest cells for the production of the next generation of creche children. We saw alerts from the elites. We saw traffic routing, job assignments based on genetics and aptitudes, and alerts on where to take our daily meals. Everything pertaining to personal, daily life.

And on the left side of my vision, always in movement, was the red to green bar of original thought.

The theory was that if you had an original thought, you would be elevated. You would have a chance, if the thought was original enough, and if you had enough of them, to become an elite. Or at least work under the elites, a few steps higher than you had been.

Some people strove for original thoughts. Their slavery was swift and usually unknowing. They’d lose themselves into their dream worlds and never know how many trade empires depended on their originality.

Some tried hard not to have original thoughts but had them accidentally. Those slaves went fighting and screaming into their elevated exiles.

But most people, from an early age, learned to manage the level of their originality bars. Keep it above red—where you’d be kicked to the streets as genetic chaff—but below yellow-green. If you could hold a steady yellow-orange, you’d have a nice, ordinary, productive life. No great upheavals. No great risks, no great rewards.

My originality bar was steady in its usual yellow-orange as I trekked through the litter-strewn streets. A rain had been scheduled for earlier that day, and my boots made soft splashes in black puddles. I’d known the rain was over when I’d come out, but I’d worn my brown duster with its weather-proof coating anyway, because I liked it.

There were no portal tubes in this district, and auto cabs wouldn’t come here, so I had to walk. People would strip both portals and cabs for the metals and resell the parts. That thought was hardly original.

I went through memorized procedures over and over in my mind, a numb and soothing counterpoint to a rising anxiety. My left hand played with the cool metal of my phone in my pocket, a nervous habit I’d never tried to break. I had a sour feeling in my stomach, something that rarely happened on a trace. Tracing was usually as simple as finding the target and bringing them in. Give or take a few bruises or tase gun singes.

But as I neared the place where my target had stopped and saw the sign above the grimy storefront glass, my unease grew.

It was a cuddle shop. There were hundreds of them around the city. If you didn’t have a domestic partner or two, or if you were desperate enough for human contact, you could find it here.

I’d been to some of the middle-class facilities—called Human Contact Therapy there—I wasn’t a recluse. But everyone who was sane stayed away from shops in districts like this. Places like this, people found ways to piece together originality without ever having a full original idea on their own. How to build illicit tech to simulate nerves and responses that were no longer in the human genetic code. Because humans had apparently not out-evolved the need for sex, despite the lack of equipment for it or the stability of a truly sexless society. Which was ridiculous. Genetics were more stable without the haphazard nature of biological reproduction. People didn’t go into hormonal rages like we learned about in ancient history. And there was far, far less abuse. Who could imagine a society so divided that one half subjugated the other purely based on genetics?

I pushed through the creaking door into the shop and had the thought I sometimes had, that maybe our society wasn’t so different from the old horrors in the history texts. That eliminating biological sex and gender had only transferred the problem to a different arena. Humans would always find a way to dominate others, and maybe that domination was still genetic. The bred thinkers vs. the bred non-thinkers. The elites vs. those in shacks on the streets. All watched, all pre-disposed to their lives, and if someone broke their prescribed mold, it was because they were supposed to. Genetic destiny, because the geneticists did not make mistakes. Everyone in their place.

The originality bar on the side of my vision hardly twitched. This thought I was having was not an original thought. Not for me, not for the millions of people monitored by the system.

“Can I help you?” A squat, older person with wild gray hair came toward me in the shop’s humid, off-white lobby.

I grimaced at the tang of sweat in the air. But I pulled out my phone, flipped open the holo, and showed a picture of my target. “I’m looking for this person. Have you seen them?”

“Oh,” the squat person said. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, they’re here.”

I tilted my head. “Still here? Still alive?” I flicked my phone’s holo back to the map. The red dot was solid, and close.

The person fidgeted, a sort of nervous dance. I focused on them, my tracer’s license giving me the ability to see their vitals, their originality bar. All were dangerously high. In a city that tried its best not to do anything out of the ordinary, fear was an original thought.

“Come with me,” the squat person—Dev 1126, the registered owner of this property—said, and led me into the back.

I passed steamy, translucent cubicles. I did not think about what was happening inside them, my lips tightening against the perversity. Human touch was fine. Benign affection was fine. More than that was dangerous.

The owner led me past all the cubicles to a room in the back, a room that had a sterile edge about it, with medical objects and tech on steel counters and an unoccupied medical table in the center.

“I don’t do anything here,” Dev 1126 said. “I just own the building.”

A standard excuse for one part of an original idea. Someone would own the place. Another would facilitate the tech parts, and a few more daring idiots would brush against fate by having just enough of an idea to spread it around. To build whatever they were building.

The room was empty. I checked my map again, and the red dot was centered just beyond this room. I reached into my right coat pocket for my tase gun.

“Hey,” the owner said, putting their hands up. “Hey, I didn’t do anything. Your target’s in there. Back through there.” They nodded at a back door.

Everything about this felt like a trap.

Fortunately, there were procedures for traps.

I shouted, “Emin 4892, come out peacefully, or I will use excessive force!”

I wasn’t expecting my target to come out so easily, and fully expected to have to turn my tase gun’s settings to demolition, but the door cracked, and a slim hand poked out and waved.

“I’m coming out,” a high-pitched voice said. Abnormally high. High with fear?

My brows knit and I hesitated, my aim wavering. Did I have the right person? There was something…off…about that voice. My originality bar jerked precariously upward, and I set my thoughts into reviewing the case file again. The voice did partially match the voiceprint on genetic file for Emin 4892. Thirty-three years of age. Food tester for a gourmet food chain. Nice job, don’t know why they left it. Don’t know why they wanted to have an original thought, if they wanted to at all.

The whole person came out through the doorway. Below average height and weight, bowl-cut black hair. They both were and were not my target. Cosmetic surgery had been involved, certainly. But had it healed this quickly? I’d only got the alert on my target that morning.

Emin 4892 wore a loose, surgical-type green gown and crossed their arms under…anatomy that should not be there.

We all knew what we came from. We all knew the barbaric forms our ancestors had been forced to live in for thousands of years before they were evolutionarily liberated. We knew the carnal drives that society insisted we were no longer slaves to but places like this insisted still lingered in our minds, like an itch that was never quite scratched.

I had never seen an actual throwback, a female, before. For a fleeting, dangerous moment, I wondered if I would feel something more than I should, if my thoughts would turn too original, but they didn’t. I guess I’d never had that itch.

But Emin 4892 apparently had.

They read my judgment, my horror, and their black eyes turned cold. They held their arms tighter around themself.

“That’s right, look at me,” they said. “This is who I am. You can’t take it from me.”

Emin 4892 and the people of this shop must have found a way to perform surgery—no, some kind of genetic splicing or modification—without scars and with rapid healing factor. That in itself was massive originality and an incredibly valuable commodity.

I stared at Emin 4892, and I couldn’t see their vitals. Their red locator dot still shone on my phone, but it hadn’t moved from the back room. Whatever had been done to them had been done there, and that’s where the dot had stopped. Where “they” had stopped and become “her.”

It was physiological, wasn’t it? Not just a cosmetic change. This person was actually female.

I tightened my grip on my tase gun. “Yes, I can take it away. Emin 4892, congratulations. You have had a highly original thought. You will be taken to originality processing where you will be given new accommodations to match your risen status.”

Emin 4892 flipped me the finger. But she didn’t try to bolt. She wasn’t going to run, was she?

“I’m original,” she said, voice tight and smug. “I’m original. I’m an artist, and this is my art.” She waved down at her body. “I decided to make a study of ancient human anatomy. That is an acceptable branch of study. I made an original breakthrough in the field of this art. Look at me—a living sculpture. You can’t destroy that, or return me to how I was. Destruction of originality is a capital crime, isn’t it?”

My thoughts jittered, following her logic. I tried to keep my thoughts in line, but my originality bar rose dangerously into yellow-green. My heart rate intensified.

“Yes, destruction of originality is a crime,” I gasped. I closed my eyes, still watching my originality bar, and ran backward through my most-used procedural manual.

My thoughts began to flow again. To slow. The originality bar went back to yellow-orange.

I exhaled and opened my eyes. I’d take my target in. They were not my problem—they were for someone much more original than I to deal with. It didn’t matter that my target had a point to make, or a sculpture to display, or whatever perversity they thought they were getting away with. It would all smooth out in the end. And it was not my problem.

Emin 4892 sensed their victory, whatever victory they thought they’d gained, and held out their arms. I slapped cuffs on their wrists and shuffled my target out of the shop. I flagged the shop for immediate lockdown and further investigation. It would be shut down, the valuable tech confiscated and taken to be studied by more original scientists. Those who’d built the tech would be traced and taken in, too. You couldn’t escape the fate of original thoughts.

Society would continue in its stability.

Or would it? I darted a glance at Emin 4892. Were they—I couldn’t use “she” without my originality bar climbing, and maybe it wasn’t even “she,” did I even have a right to determine that?—as deranged as our society dictated? Did they just want attention and infamy or did they seriously think that going back to humanity’s original evolutionary forms was a good thing? And if Emin 4892 had caused this much stir already, how could so much originality, so much chaos in concepts like gender or sex, possibly be good?

Emin 4892 walked beside me with a confidence, a carriage in their step I’d only seen in elites. And their eyes flashed with something beyond the defiance, their mouth tight with intense determination. This meant something to them. Something more than status, maybe even more than a statement.

My originality bar started to climb again, and I shunted my thoughts back to procedures, looking away.

Emin 4892 grinned. A sour, knowing grin.

And I hated myself for feeling the contempt in that grin and knowing that I maybe deserved it. That maybe we all did.

That was also not an original thought.

I escorted my willing target down the city blocks to the nearest portal tube, doing my best not to think of societies and change.

Author’s Note: Being queer and non-binary, one of the things I think about a lot is what a future society might look like where gender and sexuality aren’t an issue, and everyone freely expresses who they are. Usually, that feels like a big, happy world (or worlds!) to me, and I truly hope for that future. But this story was born out of what if that idea went horribly wrong and the concepts of gender and sexuality weren’t normalized but banned—what would that society look like? Turns out, pretty dark.

Novae Caelum is an author, illustrator, and designer with a love of spaceships and a tendency to quote Monty Python. Stars short fiction has appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, Escape Pod, Clockwork Phoenix 5, and Lambda Award winning Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction. Most days you can find star with digital pen in hand, crafting imaginary worlds. Or writing alien poetry. Or typing furiously away at stars serial genderfluid romance novels, with which star hopes to take over the world. At least, that’s the plan. You can find star online at novaecaelum.com.

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DP FICTION #55C: “Fresh Dates” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires

SFX, International Terminal

The scuttling of a million feet before him, the collective aspirations to get somewhere resounded in the marble hall, while he stared at his stubby chin in the glass. He rubbed a growing five o’clock shadow with a soft hand. “Paging passenger Carl Rogers. Please come to Gate 48B. Paging passenger Karl Rogers. Please come to Gate 48B.” The near-garbled voice issuing forth from the speakers was far from honeyed, but there was something sweet about the announcement and the cadence of the passenger’s name. At that moment, he would do anything to be Karl Rogers, to have such a short three syllabled name, so he could be rushing about like the many others rushing about. Needing to get somewhere and feeling the inadequacy of bipedalism in hauling body and material possessions to reach that end.

7F. His gaze shifted beyond his saggy eyelids and the harried countenance of Vishaljeet Mazandaran in the reflection staring from the glass at him. 7F. Seven effing syllables. He hit the convex button to his right, perfectly crafted to nestle his fingertip. One button for the number seven—for his monstrosity of a name when rendered into syllabic roman letters: Vi-shal-jeet-Ma-zan-da-ran. The other for the F for effing, for the way he felt standing here staring at this vending machine. The smooth buttons and the way they cradled his hand belied the enormity of the situation and the creeping feeling of unease. One push and processed foods appear before him, ready to eat. It was so simple, so elegant, almost a physics equation: one action that precipitates another reaction. A button, a mechanism from behind the machine, the coil winds, the snack falls.

He had been staring at the snack which was so innocently snack-like, and yet, never in his twenty years in the States has he seen a bag of Fresh Mazafati Dates tucked away among the coils like he did now. Its tantalizing green package called for him, like the swaying grass of the verdant prairies and the tall trees of the forests of Nur alongside the crystal blue Caspian Sea of his childhood. And only $1.50. Six quarters to afford him a taste of his old home, of the grocery store near the apartment, where they would have the dates in boxes piled next to candy bars, popcorn and small packages of tissues that owner Alireza hoped you would grab as impulsive buys.

He decided he would do it, had an obligation to— who else would buy these foreign dates that had probably been sitting here for ages now? The dates probably fermenting as he felt like he was in his collared shirt and classic fit trousers, his suit jacket folded in half across his left arm. He fed the machine the replicated bust of George Washington, founder of this proud country, hearing the coins fall as identical clinks into the machine’s abyss—and waited for the deposit to yield a sweet, nectarous outcome wrapped in polyethylene lining.

Instead of dates, he got Hostess Ding Dongs. What a wonderful joke! Similarly brown, yielding a sweet flesh, he guessed it could be a substitute for someone who didn’t know better. His finger must have slipped— did he press the correct button? The bag of dates beckoned to him again, an enticing product of nature held behind the glass as an object of admiration, like a museum artifact, and instead in his hands, he found himself holding a crinkling product of mostly Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Shortening generously doused in High Fructose Corn Syrup. Ding Dongs—he remembered eating them when he first came here to the US.

Most of all he remembered the office jokes, his coworker Stan, or as he liked to call himself, Stan the Man, the proud pusher of dubious investments, who would pitch a pencil at Vishaljeet’s turban, saying the bun, or as Sikhs would call it, joora, looked like a little boy’s ding dong. After the third time in two weeks, Vishaljeet had half a mind to go to HR, but what would they do? A grown man tattling on his colleague. Not an upstanding approach to deal with banal workplace terrorists, he decided.

That was all ten years ago, ancient history, as far as he was concerned. He jammed the fluffy Ding Dong into the waste bin next to the vending machine. The joke’s on me, he thought, now I’m the effin’ terrorist, stuck in this airport, can’t leave the terminal. I should’ve ratted on Stan, got him fired, rained more havoc while I had the chance, he thought. But he knew he would never have done that. It wasn’t in his blood; he was never taught to inflict undue harm on others. (But, it was not undue, it was probably in all fair use of the term “due,” and yet, he could not and knew he never would get someone fired from their job, their income to feed their family for some petty name-calling.) Instead he found a convenient excuse to move his desk to the sixth floor. Avoidance some might call it, but smart evasive tactic is the way he thought of it.

His life was always full of smart evasive tactics in approaching assimilation. He kept his turban for half a decade, keeping faith to the minority that he was whether in his hometown Iran or his newfound dwelling, land of the free, the recipient of “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” America, but eventually conceded to the calls of practicality that noted that the refuse-turned-residents generally didn’t wear turbans. He didn’t have to and he knew he could have kept it, but he was just tired of the explanations, of the looks of inquiry, the snickers. He played with the idea that when this airport fiasco was over, this silly detention in this transport hub keeping him from his home of twenty years in Jersey, he’d put the turban back on, if he could find it buried in his wardrobe somewhere. He’d be out soon, anyway. Back on a plane to the East Coast in no time. Just a hitch, he thought, a misunderstanding. He had a fiancé after all, and a position in i-banking he’s held for at least a good ten years. Wears jeans at home, drinks coke and watches football. How more American can he be?

His stomach whimpered. It was not really sustained enough to be a growl. Not enough for a meal. The officials didn’t even provide him the decency of an airport tray of food. Not even Panda Express or Taco Bell. Just told him that he was denied entry until further notice. His frustration curbed his hunger, however, and all he wanted were those dates, just as odd-fitting as he was, in the array of American snacks, and yet, it was there, belonging to the cache of automated refreshments.

Another fumble of coins and another buck fifty for a Persian fruity confection. A series of whirs and out comes—not his fruity delight as expected—but a yellow package of Starburst. He smacked the glass on the machine, but to no avail. These machines are as sturdy as bulls, made to take hits. It’s not like the dates were dangling on the edge of the coil, anyway, so aggression was of no use. They were perfectly lined up as they were when he first peered through the glass of the vending machine. Instead, another slot that had been activated that released the Starburst. He saw the familiar yellow package now in partition 9B, next to the Cheetos and M&Ms. Not the Fresh Mazafati Dates of 7F.

His will relinquished control to his gut and he unwrapped one chew to mollify his hunger. Twenty calories of corn syrup and palm oil. Unexplainably juicy, the package read. Certainly there were aspects of the sweet that were unexplainable, he thought. He thought of the name Starburst, a kind of galaxy, one that bears high rates of star formation. The Cosmic Exploration podcast taught him that. The kinds of things he would learn on his hour commute in New Jersey, sitting in traffic, playing with the dials. He thought about high star formation, as he chewed his artificial extreme juiciness. Starburst seemed like potential, the greater the generation of stars, the greater the possibility of planets. It was the bringer of life. Starbursts as firehouses of possibility, of creation.

Then his mind turned dark and inwards and he thought of other bursts, of those he’s been accused. He recalled an infamous moment—he was making a purchase for a boss’s birthday at the mall when it happened, in the early morning, right as work was to start. While all the consumers rushed to the Sears TV screens to see what the commotion was, once he heard the words “terrorists” and over and over the date that now has an ominous ring: 9/11, he slinked away, took the day off and stayed home. He hated them, the terrorists for what they did, ignoble acts of abomination, and he hated them more for what they did to his identity. He was no longer a Punjab-son-of-migrants-Iranian-American. He was first and foremost a suspect, to be wary and leered at, for someone not Sunni, not even Muslim, but still a prime candidate for jeers of being a bomb-flinging subversive. He didn’t get it— Sunnis and Sikhs didn’t even look the same. Sunnis don’t even wear turbans, they wear skullcaps. And Iran is mostly Shia (with exceptions of minorities like him). Even though his parents adopted a Persian surname named after Vishaljeet’s northern Iranian birthplace (where his parents migrated to), he was set aside from “normal” Iranians because of his top-knot donning of the turban of the Sikhs of his ancestral land Punjab rather than the spherical wrap the majority Shiite Iranians favored. Now, the same aesthetics that set him apart in Iran as a Punjab minority conversely made him more generally Muslim to an angry American populace, for reasons he could fathom given the ignorance but still could not really believe.

For the next few months, Vishaljeet saw his friends and family drop their turbans like stones into a river, a burden that sunk to the bottom never to be detected again. Their hair cropped short and neat, the iron dagger a mere pendant tucked under the button-down shirt, or in one case, as a subdued tie clip. Nothing flashy or even hinting of inciting aggression, let alone violence. Tucked shirt, shaved, hair trimmed. Just another ant in the American colony of capitalist businessmen.

He spat out the half-masticated Starburst into a tissue, wadded it and into the trash the whole package went. The sweetness was getting so overwhelming that it tasted almost hyperbolic. He pulled out another tissue and wiped his lips of concentrated cherry juice and Red #40. That wad, too, into the chute.

He decided he’d have another go at the vending machine. He was determined. He would get the dates. His resolve was like a gamer at a claw machine at the arcade, committing ceaseless trials fishing for the wayward stuffed animal that cost a sheer fraction of the bills pulled out of the wallet.

7F. He watched carefully as he clicked, matching his fingers to the buttons.

Another failure. This time Kit Kat. Reminding Vishaljeet of when he had bought his first Kit Kat at a newspaper stand near a bus stop. Again almost twenty years ago when he first arrived in this country. While sitting waiting for his stop, among other passengers bouncing in their seats, he took a surreptitious bite, just opened it and bit it whole—and was ridiculed by a boy with braces pointing at him, nudging at his preteen friend laughing. He looked around—perhaps they were pointing at someone sitting beside him—but they were clearly pointing at him. He didn’t understand it—a grown up eating a candy bar, how can this be a source of contemptuous fun for juveniles? Later he learned he was supposed to snap each of the perforated four pieces, one at a time, as he ate them. A social gaffe, an etiquette breach of handling quintessential Americana.

He deposited this junk in the trash bin—out the vending machine flap the Kit Kats came and into another flap it goes like the other previous unwanted conferments. He’d have to try again.

He was sticking in his third quarter of the six into the coin sliver of the vending machine when a young man bumped into him. “Excuse me,” said the man, on his cell phone. Vishaljeet’s quarter clattered to the ground and rolled about a foot and a half before spinning in a graduated lethargy to a stop. The man picked up the quarter and handed it to him, then hung up the call and pushed his thin cell phone into his chest pocket. Below that, clinging to his abdomen, hung a conference tag, “Daniel Chih-hung Chen,” it said. This man, Daniel, glanced at the vending machine, stopped for a second and asked if Vishaljeet was using it.

“Why don’t you go ahead?” offered Vishaljeet, extending a soft hand towards the glass.

Vishaljeet saw Daniel feed a crumpled dollar, watched it come back out and only to be fed again, (like giving peas to a petulant child, he thought), and then a few dimes and nickels. The man pressed 7F. Seven for the syllables in my name, thought Vishaljeet Mazandaran again. Something fell to the abyss below with a plop and the man opened it and pulled out a puffy package.

The man, Daniel, stood there for a moment, bent over at the base of the machine, one hand holding open the flap exposing the dispensing chasm of the vending machine and the other holding up a bag of Doritos.

“Huh, tortilla chips,” said Daniel.

“A problem?” asked Vishaljeet.

“No, not a problem. Just confused. Clearly, I saw peanut brittle.”

“Peanut brittle?” asked Vishaljeet.

“Yes, 7F. You don’t see it? It’s Taiwanese, one of our specialties there. A-li brand, it says, known in South Taiwan. Sweet, crunchy, very tasty. I didn’t know they packaged it for commercial overseas sale,” Daniel answered, muttering a bit to himself.

“I see,” said Vishaljeet. He looked at the vending machine but saw only dates in 7F. “Ali is an Iranian name.”

“Oh yeah? We have a lot of Ah-something’s back in Taiwan,” said the man. “I guess that’s something we have in common.” He was now standing upright, holding up the bag of chips inspecting it against the 7F goodies behind the glass. “It’s strange, I still see it there. The peanut candies. I guess I pressed the wrong number.”

Daniel brought the bag of chips up and held it six inches from Vishaljeet’s face. Vishaljeet could see the orange triangles on fire in the image on the bag, taunting him. For a second, he felt something dreadful, like seeing his hopes of returning to his home in America burn away. “Spicy Nacho,” Vishaljeet read.

“You want this?” asked the man Daniel. He turned his lips up into a frown, and shook the Doritos bag again.

Suddenly, an image passed before Vishaljeet.

It was that same Taiwanese-American man before him, the same Daniel Chih-hung Chen walking in Keds on pavement in bright daylight, in a plaid shirt and corduroy pants. He’s much younger now, no hint of a receding hairline. He’s strolling the streets of downtown, cars zooming by every so often. He hears a taunt, a “Hey glasses!”

Daniel turns. He’s in mid-bite of the same triangular crispy Doritos. He’s got a handful in his right, the bag in his left. His mouth moves up and down with specks of some bright orange dust in the midst of chomping, just as the other voice says in a gruff, incredulous manner, “You eating nachos?”

“Yeah,” says Daniel, looking at his bag. “Do-ri-tos,” sounding it out. He turned around and looked at the guy talking to him. The man was short, with spiky blonde hair. He was sitting on some steps at the time but now stood up, still somewhat hidden in the shadows of the apartment complex, and looked Daniel up and down.

“Na-chos? Huh?” The man was now taking a step forward, puffing up his chest, like some pigeon mating ritual. “Look, Nachos!” he says to an imaginary crew or posse, but there was no one with him. He turns to Daniel again, “Glasses, you prefer to be called Nacho?”

Daniel just started to walk away. He turned around, aimed east towards home, towards the fiery sun, ignoring the guy with the crusty voice in the shadows.

“Nacho!” the guy howled behind him. Laughing riotously. “Notchyo country!! Notchyo country at all. Go back to your country, where you belong!”

The image faded and Vishaljeet saw before him a much older Daniel, worn-looking, but otherwise well-kempt, his arm pushing his carry-on back and forth in a nervous tic, eager to get to baggage claim, or to his gate, or wherever he was going.

“Hey, did you hear me? I said, did you want this?” repeated Daniel. Daniel was distracted. He was now looking at the scrolling Departures list on the screens next to the vending machine, using a pinky finger to push up his falling glasses, while still holding out the sachet of Doritos to Vishaljeet.

Vishaljeet shook his head. “Not really,” said Vishaljeet. “Not a big Nachos fan.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Daniel said.

Vishaljeet watched Daniel hurry away, the one arm guiding his rolling carry-on, the other still clutching the bag of Nachos, despite his professed dislike of them. Vishaljeet turned back to the green sachet of dates, the seductive contents of 7F, the fruit of his once-home in Iran, never found in vending machines in his now-home America until just today. His now-home America, he thought.

The green plastic of the parcel of dates now looked artificially green. How could he have ever thought it looked like the verdant prairies and lush forests of Nur? he thought. It must be the changing of light in this hall, perhaps the setting of the evening sun, even as fluorescent lights flooded the terminal. The plastic package looked sickly green, lackluster, dull and ineffective, like the meaningless green card frittering away in his back pocket, the one that had his name scrawled: Vishaljeet, in Indo-Aryan parlance: great victory, now victor of none, stuck in limbo between places, not even a victor against a mechanized snack dispenser.

Author’s Note: “Fresh Dates” was inspired by current events in America and my long fascination with vending machines and their conveniences and frustrations. Sometimes it’s the little things that magnify the greater indignations and outrages of life. I suppose I also had a few things to say about migration, assimilation and belonging.

D.A. Xiaolin Spires steps into portals and reappears in sites such as Hawai’i, NY, various parts of Asia and elsewhere, with her keyboard appendage attached. Besides Diabolical Plots, her work appears or is forthcoming in publications such as Clarkesworld, Analog, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Nature, Terraform, Grievous Angel, Fireside, Galaxy’s Edge, StarShipSofa, Andromeda Spaceways (Year’s Best Issue), Factor Four, Pantheon, Outlook Springs, ROBOT DINOSAURS, Mithila Review, LONTAR, Reckoning, Issues in Earth Science, Liminality, Star*Line, Polu Texni, Argot, Eye to the Telescope, Liquid Imagination, Little Blue Marble, Story Seed Vault, and anthologies of the strange and beautiful: Ride the Star Wind, Sharp and Sugar Tooth, Future Visions, Deep Signal, Battling in All Her Finery, and Broad Knowledge. She can be found on her website daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com and on Twitter @spireswriter .

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DP FICTION #55B: “Dear Parents, Your Child Is Not the Chosen One” by P.G. Galalis

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Thank you for expressing your concerns about Rodney’s First Term grade. Please understand that the highest mark of “Chosen One” is exceedingly rare, even among our exceptional student body here at Avalon. Rodney’s grade of “Stalwart” is neither a mistake nor cause for concern, but a performance about which you and he can both be proud.

As I indicated in my written evaluation, Rodney is a bright young man, although he does have room for improvement in the areas of effort and behavior. I’m told by his Warrior, Wizard, and Rogue teachers that he shows equal aptitude in all three classes, so I’m confident that with support and encouragement, his skills will continue to improve.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Teacher of Intermediate Feats & Virtues

Avalon Preparatory Academy for Adventurers

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I apologize for the misunderstanding. When I said Rodney would improve, I did not mean that he should expect to earn a grade of “Chosen One” next term (or any other term for that matter). “Hero” would really be a more realistic goal, perhaps further down the road, should he improve his efforts, though I’m afraid “Paragon” would be quite out of reach.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Thank you for the information about Rodney’s early displays of giftedness as a child. I understand how excited you must have been about the promising results of his Early Childhood Augury, but you should know that ECAs have proven notoriously inaccurate. (In fact, the National Questing Board no longer recommends them). In any event, I did not mean to impugn Rodney’s potential, and while I understand that his sense of destiny might be a bit shaken, I hope you’ll agree that many paths to success still lie open to him.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I must respectfully disagree with your definition of success. Most of our graduates go on to successful adventuring careers without being Chosen Ones. It would be insulting to limit any definition of “success” to only those few. In fact, in my seventy-three years here at Avalon, I’ve only ever had two pupils earn that distinction. It is, necessarily, quite rare, especially during a lengthy interbellum period like the one we are currently enjoying. If you ask me, we should consider ourselves lucky to have no present need for Chosen Ones.

On a brighter note, you’ll be happy to know that Rodney did quite well on his recent Courage and Morality quiz.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I cannot violate student privacy by discussing former students with you in any detail. Suffice it to say, I’m sure you’ve heard of the two Chosen Ones I mentioned having taught. They graduated in the same year, and you no doubt heard all about their eventual feud and subsequent downfall. If I may say, they serve as an excellent reminder that being a Chosen One is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve known many a Stalwart (or Hero, should Rodney’s effort and behavior continue to improve!) who have gone on to happy and fulfilling quests.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I resent your implication that my instruction was in any way responsible for the Calamity of the Twins. Avalon graduates are responsible for their own choices after leaving us, and the moral track record of the vast majority of our adventurers is quite positive. I assure you that Rodney is in good hands in my class.

Respectfully,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

No, I am not only taking credit for my successes and ignoring my failures. I happen to be well aware of my personal shortcomings (though they are no business of yours), and poor teaching is not one of them.

Speaking of shortcomings, however, I’m sorry to report that Rodney’s recent score on his Courage and Morality quiz appears to have been the result of cheating. I caught him with a Talisman of Balacoth today, which I don’t need to tell you is a serious infraction of the Avalon Code of Conduct. Please expect further communication from the principal regarding this matter.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I’m sorry you have not yet heard from the principal. Please understand that he is only a couple of years from retirement and has slowed down some after several good centuries of service to Avalon.

To answer your accusation, however, I am NOT making a baseless charge. On the day in question, Rodney was the only one to have answered any questions correctly, and I grew suspicious when even his brightest classmates were making silly mistakes. Even I had slipped up once or twice only to have your son correct me. Lo and behold, when I checked under his desk, there it was, a little carving of the Fist of Balacoth, and it had taken hold of all the good fortune in the room. After I dispelled it, I had a hunch, so I let the class retake their Courage and Morality quiz. Suffice to say, your son no longer has the highest score.

We do not permit talismans, amulets, or potions of any kind within the school, for obvious reasons. I do not know where he obtained his contraband, but you may want to have a conversation with your son.

Respectfully,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

To suggest I was suspicious of Rodney merely for giving correct answers is ridiculous. I know he is quite capable of performing well on his own, and I’m sorry he felt the need to resort to cheating in order to prove himself. He remains a student of great potential for whom I still have hope.

And no, unfortunately, Rodney may not have an extension on his term paper. It remains due tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I was as surprised as you by the drop in Rodney’s Second Term grade. My previous optimistic statements about his potential were never meant as a guarantee. I’m sorry if you misunderstood.

I’m afraid it was his term paper. Students were to write an essay extolling one of the classic heroic virtues with three specific examples, but Rodney chose to write about “ambition,” which was not on the assigned list of options. (I question whether it is a virtue at all.) Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I’m sorry if you were the ones who gave Rodney the idea to write his term paper on ambition. He alone is responsible for his work. Might I suggest giving him space to complete his assignments more independently in the future? (After all, you won’t be out on his quests with him, will you?)

I do not think it necessary for you to hire Rodney a private mentor. Of course, that is ultimately up to you, but Rodney’s challenges have more to do with personal choices than ability.

At this point, should you have any further concerns, it may be best to arrange a meeting. Is there a day or time that would work well for you?

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

It was completely inappropriate of you to appear via astral projection in my living room last night. I understand you are busy, but if you do not want to meet in person, please continue to direct all correspondence in writing to my school address.

Respectfully,

Madeleine Whimbley

Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Of course I want the best for Rodney, and no, I do not have anything to hide.

Rodney, however, may. I don’t imagine you’ve looked at his note-scroll recently? When I saw it today, it was filled with inappropriate doodles of damnation knives, Shigmala the Defiler, and other symbols of the malign. With your permission, I’d like to refer him for counseling with Sibyl Salens, our school soothsayer.

Concernedly,

Madeleine Whimbley.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

It is no shame to receive counseling, and I’m shocked you would suggest otherwise.

Furthermore, I’m unable to respond to the letter from Rodney’s private mentor, as school policy prohibits me from discussing a student with anyone other than a parent, guardian, or fairy godparent. You do understand, of course.

I must say, though, that I have serious doubts about either the intelligence or integrity of a private mentor who would judge Rodney’s current work to be of “Chosen One” quality. In fact, I can’t believe we are still on the topic of Chosen Ones at all. Allow me to be frank: Your son is not and never will be a Chosen One. In fact, did you know that most Chosen Ones tend to be orphans? If it makes you feel any better, I doubt we will have any Chosen Ones this year at Avalon. The world is at peace. Get a grip. (And counseling for your son).

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Per the principal’s request, please accept my formal apology for any implication in my previous letter that you ought to die in order for Rodney to become a Chosen One. That was not my intent.

Yours truly,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Rodney’s behavior in class really has become quite intolerable. Today he accused me of being an “apologist for obsolete heroism” who is “shackled by her loyalty to the fading Light,” simply because I questioned the necessity of his bragging about the new certified Ancient Birthright Sword you apparently bought him for his birthday. He continued to spend the duration of class doodling pictures of it on the corner of his parchment along with the words, “I AM YOUR SAVIOR,” instead of working on his Hero Portfolio. At this rate, he’ll be lucky to make “Rapscallion” by the end of Third Term.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

As I am the only Intermediate Feats and Virtues teacher at Avalon, and as it is a required class, the school will be unable to meet your request to move Rodney into another section. (Believe me, I checked.) Given the circumstances, I’m sure we can stick out the rest of the year and make the best of what’s left of it.

As far as Rodney’s selection of advanced courses for next year, no single course of study is more or less likely to earn him a “Chosen One.” I know the recent craze has been for Wizarding, and before that it was Warriors, but the actual data support neither. If anything, Rogues tend to be slightly overrepresented in the available data from the last several heroic ages, though the numbers are not statistically significant since Chosen Ones are so rare.

In any event, I would encourage Rodney to continue with whichever course of study he most enjoys. And yes, he will be stuck with me again for Advanced Feats and Virtues.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I’m sorry to hear that Rodney is looking at new schools for next year. For what it’s worth, I strongly urge you to reconsider. As we’re fond of saying around here, “There’s always room for redemption at Avalon!” and your son did show great promise once.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

No, “great promise” does not mean that Rodney could still be a Chosen One. Holy heavens, no. Just no.

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

Never mind, I’ve had it. Your son tried to open a Dark Portal today while my back was turned to the class. Luckily his classmates, who are better students than he is, banished it before it could do irreparable harm. The principal will be following up separately to impose a suspension for Rodney’s repeated violations of the Avalon Code of Conduct.

On a personal note, I feel the need to express how disappointed I am in your son’s decline this year. I’ve done what I can, but I only see him an hour a day. It’s not like I live with him.

Yours,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goodblood,

I understand that Rodney’s application for transfer to the Pinnacle School for Unappreciated Youngsters has been accepted. I would say “Good Luck,” except that I have rather strong philosophical disagreements with their aims and methods there, and I know that Rodney cannot accurately explain the role of Luck in an adventurer’s success anyway. So instead, I’ll just say farewell. (I’m sure the feeling is mutual).

Regards, and Ever Yours in the Light,

Madeleine Whimbley

Dear Fairy Godparent,

I write to you in these darkening days with tidings of great hope from Avalon Preparatory Academy. The First Term performance of your orphan, whom I dare not mention by name lest the spies of evil are watching, has earned the rare and distinguished mark of Chosen One. Rejoice!

Please see the enclosed packet for more information, and sign, enchant, and return the accompanying form within ten business days to grant permission for further assessment and, if necessary, individual heroic mentoring.

Congratulations! On a more personal note, I have reason to believe that, should your orphan in fact be Chosen, the Dark Lord Rodney and his forces will hardly present an insurmountable challenge.

Best wishes,

Madeleine Whimbley

Principal

Avalon Preparatory Academy for Adventurers

P.G. Galalis would love to have been a member of Oxford’s famous literary group, the Inklings (minus all the tobacco smoke), but since he was born on the wrong continent and many decades too late, he compensates by writing and teaching fantasy, science fiction, and other literature. His fiction is also forthcoming in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, and you can visit him on the web (https://pggalalis.com) or Twitter (@pggalalis). He lives with his family near Boston, MA.

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TABLETOP GAME REVIEW: Eye Found It!

written by David Steffen

Eye Found It! is a competitive hidden picture card game aimed at children. The version of the game I’m familiar with is the Disney version, though it looks like there are other variations. Each player is dealt a hand of cards with scenes from Disney TV shows or movies, such as Winnie the Pooh or Phineas and Ferb, or Monsters Inc. Another card is then flipped over for everyone to see which has a picture of an object, and the goal is to be the first to find that object. The object might be a teapot, or a hat, or the number 8, or a barrel. Any given object is in many of the pictures (though not necessarily all), so it’s a race to be the first to find it, then you flip your card over to get the new object to find, and the goal is to get rid of all of your cards.

One nice thing about the game is that it doesn’t depend on being able to read, so you can play it with children who are too young to read–you can read the object out loud or they can look at the picture of the object (though if they are too young it might take a little work for them to understand that i.e. a “hat” is not this particular kind of hat, it is any kind of hat). And kids can probably do it about as well as adults as long as they’re attentive enough, so it shouldn’t be a game they feel too discouraged about. I’ve found it useful when there’s a chunk of time that I need to keep one or more kids occupied, we used the game for the first time while waiting for fireworks on the 4th of July.

Audience
All ages, though probably aimed mostly at children or adults playing with children. The children don’t need to be old enough to read.

Challenge
Most of the challenge of the game is just in attentiveness and trying to very quickly scan pictures. There is some element of chance in that some scenes have a lot more objects than others–if you get a Little Mermaid scene there’s a whole category of items you’re not likely to find, for instance. The game levels out some as faster players lose cards because they have less cards to find images in.

Session Time
Each round typically takes less than a minute, you could play as many or few as you want.

Replayability
Definitely replayable, as you’ll get different scenes and try to find different objects in them, and especially if you’re playing with kids who enjoy the hidden picture. If you played it enough you could learn where objects are in each image I suppose to get an unfair advantage.

Originality
I’ve never seen a competitive hidden picture game, I appreciate the novelty especially because it fills a niche that I otherwise hadn’t seen many games in, as far as being good for kids who are just about ready to read but who might be too old for very basic games like Hi Ho Cherry-O.

Overall
I definitely recommend this if you currently have or expect to have kids in the 3-6 age group, because it’s a good challenge level for them, and because it’s all based on something kids can do very well you don’t have to pretend to be bad at for the kids to be competitive. Clever idea well executed.

DP FICTION #55A: “Empathy Bee” by Forrest Brazeal

I’m at the microphone for the first round of the 32nd Annual National Empathy Bee, and I can’t feel a thing.

ROUND ONE

Good morning, Alex. A man is sitting in a banker’s office. The banker says: “You have great collateral — I’ll give you credit for that.” Is this a joke? If so, why is it funny?

Press photographers in the front row dazzle my eyes with flashbulbs. The hotel ballroom stretches behind them, vast and dim, a fog bank of blurry faces. Mom sits somewhere in the audience, but I’ll never spot her with the naked eye from up here on the stage.

Fortunately, my brain implant has an image processing feature. I scroll through options in my mind, zooming, enhancing, upscaling. There she is, slumped on a straight-backed gilt chair with her “guardian of contestant” credentials drooping around her neck. The seat beside her, Dad’s seat, is empty.

ROUND TWO

Here is your next question, Alex. A middle-aged man posts pictures of his neighbor’s new sports car on social media, but he says the pictures are of his own car. Give two different reasons why he might be doing this.

The National Spelling Bee is deader than ancient Greek. So are mathletes and chess club. Now that every middle-school kid is running around the playground with a microchip in their head that syncs directly to the internet, traditional tests of academic knowledge are pointless. But those of us who aren’t good at sports still need something to do in the afternoons, so we get Empathy Bee.

The goal of the famous Turing Test is to stump a computer with questions that would be easy for a human. Empathy Bee is sort of like that. But the questions here are tricky for people, too. We’re supposed to be showing off our human potential by solving problems our brain implants can’t. It’s great practice for college essays, I’ve heard.

Some contestants spend a lot of time developing software to hack Empathy Bee and its hundred-thousand dollar grand prize, building databases of questions and using deep learning to predict responses. Veterans like me call them “chip kiddies.” The Bee stays a step ahead of technology, you only get sixty seconds at the mic, and it’s almost always better to go with your gut.

The problem right now is, my gut is missing in action. I’m used to nerves — they give me an edge — but not this dull incoherence.

ROUND THREE

Alex, you are late for class. You see two older kids bullying Ben. You know that if you stand up for Ben, he will think you are his friend. You don’t want to be friends with Ben, and you are scared of the older kids. What should you do?

I stumble on the third round question, speaking in half sentences, and I see the head judge’s hand hover scarily close to the dreaded buzzer before she decides to accept my answer.

Empathy Bee uses five judges at the national level. They score our responses on a ten point scale and determine if we’ve done well enough to advance. Because Bee questions are highly subjective, the judges take a lot of crap every year from angry parents, but I guess they’re used to it. Some of them used to judge beauty pageants.

Last year, when I got buzzed out in the fourth round on an answer I still think was pretty good, Mom spent two hours outside the judges’ greenroom demanding an explanation. She didn’t get one, and I don’t think I’ll get that kind of support from her this year. She’s spent the last few days wan and distant, refusing to talk about anything except nothing. She won’t discuss what happened the night Dad left.

ROUND FOUR

Alex, you are four years old. You have lost sight of your family in a crowded theme park. How do you feel, and why?

We get a restroom break before the fourth round. Standing in a line of seventy kids with nervous bladders, I flip my implant out of “do not disturb” mode and check my messages. The Bee jams network communications in the ballroom to block hints from parents or coaches, but here on the upper level of the hotel I’ve got a little bit of service.

When I feel the message coming in from Dad, the little jolt of electricity seems to travel right down my spine into my stomach. I haven’t heard from him in eight days.

Hey son. Good luck up there. His words jab into my mind like pins.

I message him back, keeping my eyes fixed on the tiled floor as neurons flow in and out of the implant. Where are you? Don’t you know the bee is on right now?

Yeah, I’m watching it on TV. You look great.

Is she with you?

Come on, Alex.

No, I want to know, are you with your mistress?

Long pause. Her name’s Cynthia, okay?

I don’t want to know anything about her.

ROUND FIVE

Alex, here is an excerpt from a child’s picture book. Please read it to the judges. Watch our body language carefully. Slow down, point to the pictures, or explain the story if it appears that we are losing interest or getting confused.

I don’t know how I’m still in the competition. Answers spring out of me without a second thought, like I’m one of the robots the Bee is designed to outwit. Three years of experience and hundreds of hours of preparation are keeping me alive, somehow. For now.

I started preparing seriously for the Bee in fifth grade, sitting at the kitchen table doing practice tests with Mom. When I got frustrated and wanted to give up the whole idea, she would simply put the books away and bring them out again the next day. Around the time I won my first regional playoff, her enthusiasm became mine, and I didn’t need any more encouragement to study.

Dad helped out, too, in the early days. I remember lying with my face in the living room carpet, feeling rather than hearing his deep voice reading me the prompts. I’m not sure when that stopped. This past year, he mostly lay on the couch in the evenings, eyes rolled up in his head, communing with his implant. Keeping up with work stuff, he claimed.

ROUND SIX

Hi again, Alex. Let’s pretend you have a young brother, Matt, who has ADHD. Day after day, he invades your personal space and messes up your belongings. How can you help him learn a sense of boundaries?

I tried to look up “adultery” in my implant yesterday. I didn’t get very far at first. The chip has parental controls enabled. My parents’ implants, however, do not.

My parents aren’t especially chip-savvy. They leave their implants unsecured on our shared network at home. That means I can pair my implant wirelessly with theirs and use their access credentials to get online, especially if they’re sleeping and unlikely to notice. That’s usually how I download the Q-rated headgames that my friends are playing. I used to be able to get those on my own implant, before Mom read some article about the supposed negative effects of virtual reality inside developing brains.

If Dad could do what he did — which is to say adultery, noun, voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone else who is not his or her spouse — I don’t see what’s the big deal about a stupid game.

ROUND SEVEN

Tell me a story about a time when you experienced a feeling of schadenfreüde.

The contestants are dropping out fast now. The questions get a lot harder in this round, separating the championship contenders from the chip kiddies. Aliya Dhumal, last year’s champ, fails to explain why a controlling parent would trust alternative medicine over science. She leaves the stage after the buzzer with her head down. It looks like I’m going to make the top twenty, maybe more.

I go to the restroom again during the commercial break halfway through the round. I don’t need to pee — I just want to see if Dad has messaged me again. He hasn’t.

I really wish you were here.

He responds after a minute. Me too, Alex. I’m sorry things worked out like this.

You could still make it. We have your entry badge and everything. I can see your seat from the stage.

Look, you know things with me and your mom are rough right now.

Yeah. I know.

Alex.

What?

I love you, okay? You have every right to be upset about all this. I hope you’ll understand some day that I had to do what was right for me.

Alex?

I reach behind my ear and flip the little switch that comes out of the implant, cutting off all access to the chip. My arms and legs are shaking.

ROUND EIGHT

You are a politician at a state dinner. The Italian ambassador starts telling a joke that you know will offend the Japanese prime minister. How do you intervene so that nobody’s feelings are hurt?

Mom insists I can’t blame myself for what happened that evening, but how can I not? I was the one who paired Dad’s implant with mine while he was sleeping on the couch after dinner. I only wanted his headgame password. I didn’t mean to look at his messages, and when I saw the pictures of the naked woman I didn’t know what to do. I probably shouldn’t have told Mom.

No, I had to tell somebody. I couldn’t carry that secret.

Maybe I should have kept it to myself until after the finals. I would have felt the embarrassment and the guilt, Dad’s guilt, wrenching my stomach, but at least I would have felt something besides this emptiness.

The kid sitting onstage beside me, Ginnie Worley from Cedar Rapids, mutters to herself each time she thinks the judges are about to buzz somebody. “He’s gone.”

ROUND NINE

Alex, Oscar Wilde once wrote that “each man kills the thing he loves.” If you truly love something, why would you let it go?

The flashbulbs blast in my face, leaving floaters all around my field of vision. It’s like looking into a Petri dish. My implant is still disabled, and I have no idea how to answer this question. I don’t know why someone kills their love. I don’t even know what love is supposed to be. I’m too young to be here.

The head judge leans into her microphone. She’s an elderly woman with a constantly sympathetic expression. “Thirty seconds, Alex.”

I could turn on the implant and search the database for Oscar Wilde. That’s what a chip kiddie would do, but there’s no time now.

Did I kill Dad’s love for me when I accessed his implant? If I hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t learned who he was, wouldn’t we still be together? Or was he bound to leave anyway, like Mom says, in which case nothing matters and this whole question is stupid?

“Alex. Time’s up. If you love something, why let it go?”

I close my eyes and speak so softly into the microphone that I can barely hear myself. “Because I have to do what’s right for me.”

“Please repeat that toward the judges?”

I turn toward the judges’ table. “I have to do what’s right for me.”

The judges put their heads together, murmuring. Somewhere behind me Ginnie Worley hisses jubilantly. “He’s gone.”

The sound of the buzzer strikes me right in the chest, vibrating all through my body. The head judge sighs, looking as always like she just put down a beloved family pet. “I’m sorry, Alex, that’s not an acceptable answer.”

I look out beyond the microphone, over the judges’ table, past Mom and the sea of people, right into the TV camera on the platform at the back of the ballroom. I look through the lens of the camera into the hotel room where I imagine Dad sits in bed with his arm around his mistress. I speak slowly and with emphasis, the way they teach you. “You’re darn right it isn’t.”

Then I walk off the stage and into that strange holding pen for just-eliminated contestants called the cry room. Mom is there, and I put my head on her shoulder, and all of a sudden I have more feelings than I know what to do with.

Author’s Note: I competed twice in the National Spelling Bee and still follow it from afar. In my opinion, the Bee is fundamentally broken in the digital age — kids keep getting smarter and prep tools get better, but the dictionary stays the same. I started thinking about the evolution of academic competitions, and came up with what I think would be a much more interesting event. (I’d watch it, anyway!)

Forrest Brazeal is a software engineer, writer, and cartoonist based in rural Virginia. His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, StarShipSofa, and elsewhere. Find him at forrestbrazeal.com or on twitter @forrestbrazeal.

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DP FICTION #54A: “The Inspiration Machine” by K.S. Dearsley

“I’ve got it!” Barnes leapt out of his chair and knocked hot synth-coffee over his work interface and paunch. Perhaps that was why the idea vanished. By the time he had swabbed away the mess, the brilliant flash of creativity was no more than the memory of something that had almost been within his grasp. He needed a few breaths of bottled fresh sea air–his last multi-million global craze–to boost his brainpower.

He had exactly twenty-three minutes to find the next big thing, the product that everyone–young, old, straight, gay, white, black and everything in-between–had to have. Innovations Manager Oona Hardy had smiled at him at the last project development meeting–that smile. Barnes was sure it was produced by twitch implants that pulled back her lips to reveal entirely too much gum and teeth. No one who had been on the receiving end of that smile survived the next meeting unless they came up with something so good no one could understand why it had not been thought of before. The trouble was, the harder he tried to snatch at ideas, the faster they fled. What was that idea he had been about to have?

“I don’t need to tell you we’re under pressure. Yes the ‘Shake It’ instant drying fabrics are still selling well, particularly the towels, but with OmniCom launching its ‘Perfect Image Flexi You’ technology we have to come up with something to compete.” Oona Hardy had a way of pausing behind the so-called creatives at the conference table as she paced around it that made each one flinch. When it was Barnes’ turn, he had to fight himself not to draw in his head like a tortoise. She moved on, and Barnes exhaled.

Someone stammered out an idea. Hardy’s lips began to pull back. Any moment now, Barnes would be called upon to speak. If only there was a way to make inspiration come to order. If only there was a way to backtrack to the flash of light and stop it escaping.

“What we need is an inspiration machine.” He had not meant to say it aloud, but Oona Hardy pounced on it.

“An inspiration machine. That has possibilities… expound!”

Barnes filled in the panic with words. “Think of all the priceless inventions that have been lost because an alert beeped or someone spoke. An inspiration machine would take you back to the instant when the idea began to form and allow you to follow it through… ” He was babbling, but Hardy was already filling in the gaps.

“How long before it’s market-ready?”

“Umm… ” He should not have hesitated.

“Four months. Bravo Barnes! Who’s next?”

Barnes tried to breathe naturally, as Hardy’s smile lasered the colleague next to him. Four months, and he had no idea what he had just proposed, let alone how to make it. The trouble was, he needed an inspiration machine to show him.

Four months of experimenting with electronically induced hypno-regression, combinations of auditory stimuli and implants in the primitive brain, and Barnes was no further forward. All he had to show for his work was a mess of interlinked nano-chips and nerve switches.

“Is this it?” Hardy’s demand caught Barnes off-guard.

“Yes.” That was it so far.

“Good. Give me a demonstration. Is this how it goes?” Hardy picked up the contraption.

“It isn’t ready yet.” Barnes hastily positioned the kit on her.

“Absolutely. It needs to look more sexy… ”

“I meant… ”

“Switch on… ”

Barnes held his breath as Hardy closed her eyes and waited for something to happen.

“It doesn’t work,” he said.

“Mm… tingling… not unpleasant… ”

“It doesn’t work.”

“Of course it works! I’ve just had a brilliant idea how to market it.” Hardy turned on her smile.

Barnes knew better than to disagree.

The more time that passed and the steeper the sales graph rose, the harder it was for Barnes to unglue his tongue. The inspiration machine was a sensation, acclaimed by avant-garde artists and company directors alike. Barnes enjoyed the bonus Hardy gave him, but not the smile she seemed now to reserve for him. He pretended to be working on a way of tapping into parallel universes, but continued his research into trapping the creative moment. Sooner or later, the bubble was bound to burst, and if he could come up with a machine that worked he might not get caught in the blast. He attached himself to the machine’s latest incarnation and closed his eyes. He sighed. It didn’t work, he was on completely the wrong track. The reason he knew was because there was the light of an idea glimmering in the distance.

“This doesn’t look much like a parallel universe interface to me.” Hardy’s smile cut off the protest Barnes was about to make. “It’s amazing what people can do when they believe things are possible. All those testimonials we have from satisfied customers who’ve found our machine increases their innovation. Anyone who hasn’t can’t have any imagination.”

“But I know how to make it work.” Barnes tried not to listen to her: the light was still there.

“Of course you do, you invented it.”

Not the smile, not the smile, not the smile, Barnes repeated in his head. “All we have to do is… ” But there it was–the pulled back lips, the expanse of gums.

“Well?”

“Um… er… ” It was no good, it had gone.

Hardy twitched her smile back until Barnes thought her face would split in two. More alarming still, she patted his hand. “I thought so. Best stick to the parallel universe interface. I’ve got just the market for it.”

Author’s Note: Two things were mainly responsible for The Inspiration Machine: the panic when you have to come up with an idea, and that pesky inspiration is hiding again (It’s never there when you want it.), and the memory of team briefings to discuss corporate strategy. I still have nightmares.

Karla Dearsley’s stories, flash fiction and poetry have been published on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in Northampton, England, and when she is not writing she lets her dogs take her for walks. Her fantasy novels are available on Amazon and Smashwords. Find out more at http://www.ksdearsley.com.

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DP FICTION #53B: “Lies of the Desert Fathers” by Stewart Moore

The Abbot’s eyes stared up at the ceiling. The reflections of blue-robed angels flew across his gray irises. Not much blood had spattered on his face. His chest was another story. The stains had finally stopped spreading from the rents in his brown wool robe. I noticed a smear near the hem of my long skirt where I stood too close.

Revulsion erupted in my throat and I clamped my hands over my mouth. I could feel the dampness of the blood on my leg. I fought the urge to tear the bottom of the skirt off. I needed to stay calm. If I panicked, all was lost.

On the Abbot’s shaven scalp, the lights of his implanted sanctifications still blinked, attempting to change the thought patterns of a dead brain. One finger slowly twitched. The motor cortex must be getting extra juice. I focused on that. A simple, physical issue in the neurological wiring. I could fix that. I slowed my thinking around that problem.

For some reason, the Abbot’s other hand held a saw. That problem I couldn’t solve right now.

Light from the overturned lamp shone on the wall behind the Abbot’s desk. There Saint Dymphna’s painted neck stretched out to meet her father’s sword in frozen, ecstatic martyrdom. I locked eyes with her, my hot breath seething through my fingers. She could be calm. I could be calm.

A shadow moved across Dymphna’s face. I almost turned and fled, but it was only a tarantula crawling inside the fallen lampshade. It hurried out across the wooden floor, so new the room still smelled of varnish in the dull evening heat.

The spider investigated the bloody chisel. Finally, it decided against crawling over the blade. It ran toward the monk in the shadows by the door. He stood so still, all I could see of him was his multicolored winking sanctifications, forming a halo around his head.

I smiled shakily, my gorge still in my throat. “Come here, please, Beta.”

Uriel Beta stepped forward shyly. He was a young man with a scar down his right cheek. His scalp and face were clean-shaven. What a change he made from when I first met him in prison, with lank dark hair and vomit-encrusted stubble.

Now, his hands were sticky with drying blood. I had found him desperately performing CPR on the Abbot.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Beta’s eyes went blank for a second as a blue light between his eyes flickered quickly. That implant stimulated his anterior cingulate cortex. His pupils contracted again. “…I’m Uriel Beta, a brother in the Order of Saint Dymphna.”

“Who am I?”

Again the momentary blankness. I couldn’t reduce the processing time for his sanctifications any further. That was why he had to be here, in the Order’s tightly sealed compound. He wouldn’t last a minute back on the streets, where his old friends, his victims and the police would all be waiting for him.

“…You’re Doctor Abigail Wainwright.”

“Good. Now lie to me, Beta.”

“…I can’t.”

“Try.”

Beta’s mouth worked, forming the beginnings of words, only for his sanctifications to start blinking more rapidly. Intracranial magnetic stimulation pulsed through his anterior cingulate cortex. Sociopaths have low activity in that region. Finally he let out a shuddering breath.

“…I can’t, Doctor Abigail. …The words won’t stay in my head. …It’s like they’re written in sand, and the wind… it blows the sand away, and what’s left is written in stone, and it’s the truth.”

“Excellent. Now: did you do this?”

Beta stared down at the Abbot, and at his scarlet hands. He knelt down, heedless of the blood on his robe. He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. A yellow light on his forehead faded on and off, stimulating his orbitofrontal cortex, giving him sympathy for the dead man he couldn’t feel on his own.

“…No,” he said at last. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But we have to find out who did this. I’m going to have to call the police pretty soon, and if we can’t give them the murderer, they’ll have to investigate. That means asking questions, and you know how the police already feel about this place. They might even try to force you to leave.”

Beta’s lights flickered. “…Yes. I understand. …We’re all very grateful to you, Doctor Abigail.”

I remembered how Beta had been when I met him: a monster seeking only his own immediate gratification. I set my jaw.

I looked over the monitors in the corner of the Abbot’s office. The lone guard was still in the booth at the entrance to the compound, oblivious. There were no guards inside the Order. We didn’t need any: no one wanted to get out. Besides, guards would have brought their own agendas, their own ideas of regulation and punishment, inside this place, and that would ruin the delicate work I performed here.

The rest of the monitors showed empty rooms and halls, but I knew where everyone was. It was nine o’clock: time for compline, the last service of the day. I held out my hand. “Come with me, Beta.” He took my hand and stood. I didn’t mind the blood. What kind of neurosurgeon would I be if I did? I took him over to the sink where the Abbot got water for blessing, and washed our hands.

Beta scrubbed at his fingernails as his tears ran down the drain. “…He was a great man. …You and he together made me whole. …You were like my mother and father.”

I squeezed Beta’s shoulder. “I know.”

We left the Abbot’s office, and I locked the door behind us. In the hallway, the ceiling lights reflected in the dark lacquered floors, as if we were hopping on stepping-stones in a frozen river. The adobe walls slowly released the day’s heat. The air was close, and sweat beaded on my forehead.

From up ahead came the chanting of the gathered monks. I recognized the canticle at once: the “Dies Irae,” “The Day of Wrath.” I mostly knew it from funeral services. An ill-omened thing to have come up in the lectionary for today. I saw Beta’s pupils dilate, and I knew it wasn’t just the dim light. I’d given all the brothers an implant in their anterior insula cortex. It gave them an experience of being one with each other when they worshipped together: a reward for their commitment to communal life. Now the music was taking hold of Beta. I gripped his arm.

“Uriel Beta, I need you to stay with me now. You’re the only one here who can’t lie to me.”

Beta looked at me with a slowly fading smile. He shook his head hard. “…I’ll try.” We continued down the hall. The chanting grew louder. Beta, struggling with the music, fighting its insistent communion with his brothers, started a whispered conversation to try to stay present with me.

“…Why didn’t you make it so we all can’t lie to you?”

I laughed quietly. “I’m good, but I’m not that good. All psychopaths need stimulation of the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices. That just reverses the particular manifestation of their disability. There are many ways to be a psychopath. You were a compulsive liar; now you compulsively tell the truth.”

“…But do I deserve any credit for that, theologically speaking?”

“That’s not for us to decide. You’re not hurting anyone anymore, and that’s the important thing.”

I remembered the photos of his victims, and shuddered. I was acutely aware of being alone with him, but I knew I was safe. Turning off the brothers’ sex drives had been the easiest operation. A simple matter of cutting off that pathway between the amygdala and the hypothalamus. I had to, or we’d never get anything done.

Beta and I emerged into the back of the candlelit chapel. Darkness filled the circular stained-glass window, giving just hints of deep reds and blues. On the woven altar covering, flowers with lush green leaves bloomed in the desert.

Without the Abbot, the brothers still knew the rites. The slow chant of the song went on and on. The harmonies were rough: I could work no magic with musical talent. But the joy they felt as they sang, or droned, or howled, hummed through the floor. Beta trembled. I put my hand on his shoulder. He smiled beatifically.

Counting Beta and omitting the Abbot, there should have been twenty-two monks in the chapel. It only took a moment to know that one was missing. All I could see was the back of their shaved heads, each blinking with its own constellation. That was enough: I knew each of their implants better than I knew their faces. I had spent hours placing each one. There were Uriel Alpha and Gamma; there were the Raphaels, all six Gabriels, the Michaels…

My breath died inside me. Cold rose up my back despite the heat. I squeezed Beta’s shoulder hard, and he looked at me hazily. “Sariel,” I whispered. “It’s Sariel.”

Beta’s eyes widened. I pulled him back into the shadows. “He must be somewhere where he can’t hear the service, and can hide from the cameras,” I said. “Where?”

Beta thought a moment. “…The library. The special collection. There’s one corner the camera can’t see. We all know about it.”

“Let’s go.” We retreated from the chapel, back into the dark hallways.

Sariel. Our celebrity: Samuel Hutchens, the one serial killer I’d attempted to sanctify so far. Once I controlled his temporal lobe epilepsy, the rest had seemed fairly straightforward. I’d named him for the angel who taught humans about the moon. It matched the cyclical course of his murders.

Beta slowly opened the big oak door that led to the library. It creaked the tiniest bit. I prayed that only we heard it. Inside, green glass lampshades cast a watery light with pools of white on the ceiling. Books encased the walls. The shadows of shelves collected darkness. They gave off the odor of heat and paper.

I took off my shoes. We tiptoed along the shelves to the end of the row where the books about the Old Testament joined those of the New. The door to the special collection stood closed. On the floor lay a copy of the Lives of the Desert Fathers. Very slowly, I slid it out of our way with my foot.

Beta took hold of the door handle and looked back at me. I nodded. He gritted his teeth and threw it open.

Sariel stood in the corner, his nose in a book. He was a short, stocky, middle-aged man. His head was encrusted with sanctifications, like a phosphorescent reef. He looked up at us. His eyes gleamed in the dim light.

“Doctor,” he said softly. “You’re here late.” His accent was aristocratic Southern: Savannah, I knew, from his records. He sat down at the reading table.

“Why aren’t you at compline, Sariel?” I asked.

“I’m finding greater enlightenment here.” He closed the volume and turned it so I could see the cover. Neurocybernetic Behavior Modification. My first book.

“What’s that doing here?” I asked.

“The Abbot thought it was important that we know what we are.” Sariel ran his finger along the crevices of the brain on my book’s cover.

I sat down carefully across from him. “And what are you?”

“Spiritual beings, freed from the thorns of the flesh. Human as human was meant to be, human as in the Garden of Eden, free to praise God eternally until senescence. At which point we will resume the practice in heaven.”

I smiled. “That’s what you’re meant to be. You’re supposed to be better than the rest of us.”

“That’s what the Abbot thought, at least.” He looked at me from under heavy lids.

“Sariel… Have you seen the Abbot today?”

“No,” he whispered, his finger still moving over the convoluted lines. “Not personally, I mean. I saw him at worship this afternoon. And at noon. And this morning.”

“Then why aren’t you there now?”

“Because I’m tired!” he shouted. He picked up the book and slammed it back down. “I’m tired of feeling one with the universe whenever we sing a minor fifth. We’re slaves to your damned brain-machines, and I have had enough.” He reached down into his lap and brought up a tool. My whole body tensed. It was a vise grip. He set it gently on the table. “Eating and f-f-f… mating.” He spat out the word with the force of the interdicted vulgarity. “That’s what it is to be human. So how human do you think I feel, Doctor?”

“Where did you get that?” I asked, stalling for time.

“The workshop. You wanted us to be productive, after all. Idle hands, and so on. You were so sure of your work, that we wouldn’t use the tools to hurt each other. And you were right, of course. I couldn’t hurt another person now, even if I could want to.”

“Then what are you going to do with it?” My voice felt strangled in my throat.

Sariel’s fingers walked over his sanctifications like the legs of a pale spider. “I believe I know now what each one of these things does. This one, for instance—” He tapped a tiny box with a blue light on the left side of his head. “—This one regulates the communication between my amygdala and hypothalamus, so I can’t feel sexual excitation. This has been a particularly painful loss for me.”

He picked up the vise grip and closed it on that box. I stood up. “Jesus, don’t do that, Hutchens!”

He stood too. “Don’t come closer, either of you. I know what will happen. It’s like a fishhook: it does more damage coming out than going in. But it doesn’t matter, since I’m already dead to everything important in life. I’ll give you this, Doctor: you made the death penalty look good.”

He ripped the sanctification out of his head. Most of the implant tore off inside his skull, but the wire came out crusted with pinkish-gray neocortical flesh. Blood pulsed down his scalp. His right arm instantly flopped down at his side. He had torn straight through his motor cortex. He looked down at the useless limb.

Sariel grinned. “If your hand offend thee, cut it off.” His voice was thick.

“Beta, stop him!” I shouted. But when I looked back at him, Beta was shaking. His eyes rolled back into his head. He collapsed against the table and flopped onto the floor. His sanctifications scraped against the hardwood. I turned him on his side. His breathing was ragged but clear.

“And if your eye offend thee, pluck it out,” Sariel said. He gripped another sanctification and ripped it out, destroying Broca’s area, the center of grammar. “Interesting. Is. Feeling. You. Good. To me. Look. Feel… normal, almost.” He giggled, and ripped out another and another. Twitches writhed under his skin, contorting his face. His good hand trembled, so he had trouble getting at a sanctification at the back of his head. When he pulled it out, his right eye blinked furiously.

He was now blind on that side. I slipped around the table that way.

“Where… Go?” Sariel choked. He searched to his left, but like many people with damage to their left occipital lobe, he ignored his right completely. He brought his shaking hand to the center of his forehead, trying to get a grip on the winking red light there.

I grabbed the vise. It came easily from his loose fingers. I threw it away. He howled. Blood streamed down his face. His arms flailed out blindly. I grabbed my book off the table, a heavy tome full of illustrations. I swung it at the back of Sariel’s skull. I had to hit him three times, ruining more sanctifications as well as the book’s cover, before he fell down and lay shivering.

Beta moaned and tried to sit up. I knelt down and supported him. He looked around blearily under the table and saw Sariel’s bleeding head. Beta smiled weakly, then threw up. I moved to block his view of Sariel, and slowly he recovered. “…Not much good, was I?”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I turned up the activity in your mirror neurons to give you more empathy. Empathizing with that was just too much.”

“…I think I’m okay now.” I helped him stand up.

“Can you stay here and watch him?” I asked. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself any more?”

“…Yes. Are you going to call the police?”

“No.” I patted Beta’s arm. “It’ll be all right. I want to see if I can can save Sariel.” I sighed. There probably wasn’t much left of Sariel to save. I had worked so hard on him. “I’ll be right back.”

I left the library, retrieving my shoes as I did so, and headed for the Abbot’s office. I had to make sure it was undisturbed for the police. Soft chanting still drifted down the halls. The unity of the sound made it all worthwhile.

I passed by a small shrine for Saint Dymphna in the hallway. A single votive candle flickered under her portrait: a young, pretty, red-haired girl. The patron saint of the mentally ill. I wondered who had lit the candle. I thought of the men in the chapel, brains malformed at birth, who had never had a chance to choose the good at all. I freed them from that. I made it possible for God to save them. I opened the doors of Heaven.

Saint Dymphna’s ghost of a smile was not really reassuring. Neither was the crimson line across her throat.

I stalked down the hall. The brain is a physical system, I told myself, running over the old arguments in preparation for dealing with the police. A human brain is run by chemicals and electricity. You can measure it, alter it, even hold it in your hand. For God to change the flow of electricity in these men’s brains would have required a miracle, a bona-fide miracle, no less than splitting the Red Sea. And God doesn’t work that way anymore. Just read the news.

I reached the Abbot’s door and unlocked it. All I knew was, I saw sickness. I’m a doctor. So I healed it. What else was I supposed to do?

I walked around the desk. Two pools of sticky blood marked where the Abbot’s body and the knife had been.

I looked up. Uriel Beta stood in the doorway. Behind him, the other monks filled the hall. They sang quietly. I had mistaken volume for distance.

Beta’s left hand held something the size of a large rock. When he stepped forward I could see what it was.

“Uriel Beta, what are you doing with that drill?”

Beta looked down at his empty right hand. “…I’m not holding any drill, Doctor.”

“You can’t lie to me, Beta. I know you can’t.”

“…I’m not lying, Doctor. You did your work very well. See?” He waved his right hand languidly at me. “Nothing.”

“What about your other hand?”

“This?” He looked down at his left hand. It stayed very still. The knuckles were white, except the one on the trigger. “…This isn’t my hand. This is God’s hand. I don’t have any control over it.”

“Jesus. Beta, you have alien-hand syndrome. I should have known it was a possibility, it’s associated with disorders of the anterior cingulate. I stimulated that region to help your empathy, but I must have overloaded something somehow. I can fix it, Beta, I swear I can, but you have to give me the drill.”

The tarantula scurried in front of him. He knelt down.

“God doesn’t want you to take this,” he said softly. He triggered the drill and stabbed it through the spider’s body and into the floor. He never took his eyes off me as he did it. “But don’t worry. He doesn’t want to kill you either. Not like the Abbot. The Abbot wanted to saw off God’s arm.” He pulled the drill out of the floor and stood. “God only wants you to know the happiness we feel.” I realized he wasn’t pausing before he spoke. He believed what he said absolutely.

I saw blinking lights in another monk’s hand. It took me a moment to realize they were Sariel’s bloody sanctifications.

Beta’s left hand tested the drill. It whirred loudly. He stepped forward. There was nowhere for me to go. For the first time I really saw the window bars from this side.

“He’s going to sanctify you, Doctor,” Uriel Beta said as the other monks surrounded me. They grabbed me and pulled me to the floor, singing the whole time.

“You’re going to see what we see. What you gave us.” Beta knelt down over me. “Thank you, Doctor. We all thank you so much.”

I heard a sound. I couldn’t tell whether it was me screaming, or the drill. I looked up at the shaved heads all around. A cloud of blinking lights surrounded me, pulsing in complex rhythms. I knew each blink and flicker.

They were all working perfectly.

Author’s Note: “Lies of the Desert Fathers” was born out of research in the hard doctrine of original sin, that no human can achieve godliness unaided. But who knows what helps towards saintliness might be available after 50 more years of technology?

Stewart Moore began his peripatetic career by graduating college with a degree in theater, following which he directed a production of his play Henry and Beckyin New York City. Later, he earned a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible at Yale. His researches there led to the publication of his first book, Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt (Brill, 2014). Turning from nonfiction to short fiction, he has been published in anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow (The Beastly Bride, 2010) and Paula Guran (Halloween, 2011). He has also been published in the magazine Mysterion (2018). He lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter and an odd number of cats.

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DP FICTION #53A: “Little Empire of Lakelore” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires

All the world followed pretty much the same guidelines for international trade and travel. That’s a very big gloss, but let’s say it was true. And it was, for the most part.

There was however, one exception. It was Little Empire of Lakelore. Little Empire of Lakelore had to be qualified by the word little, because simply calling it the Empire of Lakelore would be a misnomer. You see, there was nothing imperial about Lakelore itself, except for its air of superiority, which was manufactured much like the actual air itself. The air had to be manufactured and pumped out, and it wasn’t too costly to do so, given the marginal cost of opening a few more factories for that purpose.

Lakelore once was a small nation that sprung from a lake. It did not literally jump out of the lake. Rather, the resources that the lake provided helped stir a willing population into convening and interacting. Water, isn’t it a great facilitator of sociality? Like all liquids, especially alcohol? Now, if the lake was made of alcohol… wait I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Lakelore was once a beautiful paradise, as is every long lost lore of an industrial hellhole. Its pristine waters grew dark with sludge. Its birds and trees became coated with dust and fell into the abyss that once was the lake. And yet, with the industrial advances, industry also cleared some of this sludge and smog, so in the end, it was rather so-so dirty.

All the world around Lakelore was more enraptured by the possibilities that the digital upheaval had brought with it. Suddenly, media was everywhere. Everyone was posting pictures, commenting on this or other, taking videos of anything their eyes happen to fall on in the course of the day. Just as Lakelore itself had been saturated with pollution, so were the digital networks deluged with the clutter of everyday nonsensical detritus.

Lyon of Lakelore was against this. He was not Prince Lakelore for nothing, after all.

One morning, when reading a print version describing a select few of the digital hogwash that washed itself onto his breakfast plate, he folded that derivative of a newspaper (which though derived from content online, itself had a derivative digital version) and said to his father, “Father,” — (for he always addressed his Father as Father and not Dad, as royals do not make such a petty mistake) —”Father, I disapprove.”

“Of what son?” Lord Titanius of Lakelore bellowed. He was small of stature but his voice bellowed as if he was constructed mainly of bass organ pipes.

“Of all this,” he said, fanning his hand over the paper.

“What about it?” said Lord Titanius.

“It’s drivel. Insulting to be considered news,” said Lyon.

“Then what shall we have done? Shall we ban it?” said Lord Titanius.

“Yes, perhaps we shall,” said Lyon.

“That would be my decision not yours. Let me ponder over such a course of action,” said the lord.

He continued chewing his sausage, the juicy bits flying everywhere, and even hitting the wet nurse who was across the palace way.

Once he swallowed the sausage he said, “Okay, I thought about it, son. You made some good points. We will ban it.”

“Decreer,” Lord Titanius hollered out. “Decreer, decree this drivel banned.”

Decreer lowered his head, blew a horn to get everyone in the empire’s attention. Since the empire stretched for a good a few feet outside the palace grounds, one of the furthest farmers living in that empire who could only see into the royal courtyard and not into the rest of the palace, stretched his ears to hear.

“I decree this drivel banned,” said the Decreer.

That one farmer with his outstretched ears did not know what this meant, so he continued to move his hoe against a pretty pathetically barren lot.

“And look, Father,” continued Lyon, immediately after the decree.

“What is it?” said Lord Titanius now, a bit peeved. He had already accomplished so much in a day and was wondering why his son persisted on pestering him past his first sausage consumption.

“Why, Father, look at these photos,” said Lyon. He picked up the paper.

“Didn’t I just ban that?” said the lord.

“Yes, but bear with me here. Give me a one-minute pardon, as we will strike this off the record that I had mentioned this at all. But, look at these faces. These are random printings of people’s faces from around the world.”

“And what about them?” said the lord, careful not to look to carefully, as he did not want to be subject to the punishment of his own ban.

“Well, they’re looking straight at us,” said Lyon.

Lord Titanius managed a glance. “Yes, well, they are profile photos.”

And Lyon sneered. “But can you believe the insolence? They look straight at us as if they have no shame.”

Lord Titanius found himself nodding in agreement. “Yes, that is rather impudent, I must say.”

“Let’s have these banned, too,” said Lyon.

Two bannings, in one day? Isn’t that a bit too much work? thought Lord Titanius. He believed in work-life balance.

“Fine, fine,” the lord grumbled. He was not yet 3/4 into his second sausage, when the decree was made.

The not-so-faraway furtherest-away farmer put again his hoe yet again to strain to hear the message. When it was over, he continued his meaningless labor that would prove to provide little if any fruit. (But, he was producing vegetables, so it was okay.)

How will people then apply for visas? thought Lord Titanius. He said the same sentence aloud without further consideration. That’s how his brain worked, as an appendage attached directly to his mouth.

“Let’s have the photographer executed?” said Lyon.

“For what?” asked Lord Titanius.

“Why? He takes pictures of these folks facing us directly, like we’re some objects of their gaze,” said Lyon. “Obviously.”

“That’s insolence, son. Take back your ‘obviously’ statement,” said Lord Titanius.

“Let it be known that I take back the word ‘obviously,'” Lyon mumbled, quite used to this retraction.

“What will you have him do?” asked the lord.

“Why, be executed. Then we’ll have someone as photographer who will take photographs so the person in the photograph must look up at us,” said Lyon.

“Look up…?” said the lord.

“Yes, tilt their head up in reverence to us,” said Lyon.

“But such photographs won’t be accepted in any other region in the world,” said the lord. “How will our men travel?”

“They don’t travel anyway, Father,” said Lyon.

“Oh. Quite right,” said Lord Titanius.

“Yes, because if we even lose one man, our economy will collapse, just like our lungs ten years ago,” said Lyon.

“Well, good thing we built those factories, all in the palace,” said the lord.

“Yes, they were very compact. Just like those compact trash cans,” said Lyon. He pointed at one now, that was smoking. “Oh wait, that’s a factory, not a trash can,” Lyon said, correcting himself.

The lord used this distraction as an opportunity to not decree an execution of the photographer, because just as Lyon said, one man gone would spell disaster for their empire’s precarious economy. But, he did later send a messenger to tell the photographer to only take photos where the subject is looking up at the camera.

“But how about if they show their friends their photos? Then they are simply revering the person looking at their photo, which is only but a friend, and not royalty,” said the photographer.

“Insolence! Just do as I say!” said the messenger who had been running back and forth between the lord and photographer, passing the message to the photographer in short bursts of bellow, just as he was ordered.

It had not occurred to the lord, nor Lyon, that a different perspective and social standing could be achieved, simply having someone who is not them look at the photo. It never occurred that they were not the doer-of-the-looking-at-the-photos action.

The photographer sent the messenger to tell the lord that he needed a ladder for this purpose of taking photos from above since he was approximately the same height as the lord himself.

It was ironic, the photographer thought, because if the lord saw these people, most men would tower over him and so it would make more sense to have visitors, should there be any, take photos down-up, as in up their nostrils rather than from top-down of their foreheads. But, then again, logic itself had been decreed banned ten days ago, only to be reinstated two days ago for logical reasons, then banned again yesterday. The photographer cleared his head of these thoughts. He wasn’t sure if they were logical or not, since he now lacked reason to make such a judgment.

Then he realized all his photos were blurry anyway, because of the smog, though not nearly as opaque as a decade back. Those were the years of the black curtain, which was really indicating the air level, rather than political situation. The photographer used to literally lift the air, like a curtain, just a peek so he could point his camera and shoot at his subject.

The next appointment he had for photographing on his list was Lord Titanius himself, who did not like his previous photo. He was not a self-serving lord; it was only that the picture did not flatter him. Of course this kind of narcissism was banned, but who is to call it narcissistic?

When the photographer climbed up the ladder to be taller than the lord, that was mistake number one. Mistake number two was taking a photo of the lord reverently looking upward, so that he would always remain the subject to someone else who was above him who was looking at the photo. The third was that the photographer had been decreed executed, or so he thought he had overheard from halfway across the empire, so what was he doing taking pictures?

The photographer brought up these points to the lord, who was standing next to him, but they needed the intermediary of the messenger to repeat it back and forth between them because it would be unseemly if they talked directly. But then the photographer struck these comments off the record since he technically had no logic. “Let’s just drop this photo in the black abyss of the lake and call it even, okay, Lord Titanius?” said the photographer.

Secretly, they agreed on this. “This will be our little secret,” said the lord, staring at his photo. He was rather fond of this photo with his shiny forehead and long nose which though predominant was made altogether even more prominent — and it was mostly all he saw in his photo, since it was taken from above.

Instead he pocketed the photo, and let the photographer drop the negative into the black abyss, where it came out the other side positive. (And who keeps negatives anyway? Like people ever make prints from them! Or even know what it means nowadays!)

The Lord decided he would avoid Lyon for the rest of the day.

I should decree no more decrees, he thought, but then he was too tired for any further decrees.

Please just let me have some rest, he thought.

Too bad rest was banned three days ago, he remembered bitterly. He bit into his next sausage and washed it down with bitters.

Oh that’s why I’m so bitter, he thought, looking at his whiskey glass, remembering it was there. He twirled the glass until the ice clinked and took another drink.

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DP FICTION #52B: “Bootleg Jesus” by Tonya Liburd

Out where rock outcroppings yearn to become mountains, there was a town cursed with no magic.

In this town, there was a family.

In this family, there was a girl.

She was nine, almost ten, Mara. Childhood hadn’t completely lifted its veil. She had an older brother, Ivan, who was fourteen, and whose voice was changing. Elsewhere, puberty would have signaled all sorts of preparations – acceptance into a special group home as much for his safety as for the general public – while his Unique Gift manifested. Watchfulness. Guidance. Training.

But not here.

Here the rocks, the soil, of the mountains had a special property that had been artificially duplicated thousands of years ago, and before that, the rock itself was transported. Here the rocks and soil prevented the manifestation of magic. There was no ‘curse’, really, of the dampening of magic – just something some said.

Everyone here in this town got along here by their wits, their brains, their strength – things were done from scratch if possible.

For what else had they to do here, this far away from civilization.

So, like everyone here around the age of puberty, Mara’s brother was special, yet not special, because of the rocks.

Mara would be special, yet not special like her older brother someday, like her mummy and daddy, like the rest of the adults. Like the people, families, who showed up sometimes on the outskirts, wanting to find a place for themselves here.

One day, Mara was playing in the house, and her father sent her to the yard. Some houses had garages, like hers, and some didn’t – like the oldest of the houses of the people who never had to arrive, who’d been here all along.

The garage wasn’t off-limits, and she was bored, so she went digging around inside.

One after another, she found an item, an item of before, before her family arrived, before she was born, and she discarded them.

In the back of all the clutter in the garage, there stood a bust of a Jesus. Unlike most busts and portraits of Jesus in the Western Hemisphere, this Jesus had brown skin and black features. It was supposed to give advice when priests and counsellors weren’t to be had. “They make them all blonde and blue eyed,” she remembered her mother saying disparagingly. “Like that’s how he was in that part of the world. As if he’d blend into the Egypt that was, if he was there. Hah!” And that would be the end of any religious discussion in the house. This Jesus was manufactured several decades ago as an answer to all the lilly-whiteness in the world, calling them Bootleg Jesuses, and one was bought by an ancestor so the family would remember they had a black ancestor as they headed into whiteness, white-acting, white-passing.

This Jesus had a heart on his chest that he presented to the world with rays of light—or in this case, neon rays—like in numerous postcards. His hair was dreadlocked. All of this was inside a metal box, made to be placed on a table, with no plug where it could be plugged in. So; what made it run?

Oh, she knew. It would run in any other place in the world, where magic ran free…

Where there existed people with Unique Gifts so powerful that they were considered gods…

She picked it up, and put in on a small round picnic table she had to unfold.

She smiled at it.

“Red and yellow, black and white,” she began to sing in her young voice, “we are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world…”

It was the only religious thing that she knew, because her mother insisted that if anyone told her that her Jesus was wrong, she was to answer by reminding them of that song.

“Jesus, do you love me?” Mara giggled.

She heard it sputter to life; it lit up. The dreadlocked head of the Jesus bowed up and down, up and down. Then stopped, the light illuminating its white robed chest going out.

Mara gasped, her mouth hanging open. Then she put her hands to her mouth and squealed.

“Mummy, Daddy, Ivan, Jesus bowed to me!”

“That’s nice, dear,” her mother said, and that was the end of that. But little Mara would never forget. The Bootleg Jesus became her favourite thing in the house, in all the world.

If one looked around, or even past the hills, there was one constant: goats. They climbed where man feared; they frolicked where man could tame them. So man ate them.

They made a soup out of them called “goat water”.

Mara liked to be outside, and so did her older brother Ivan and their friend Sydney, who visited them often, and one day they all had goat water outside, and they enjoyed it, and it became a thing for them. Goat water, outside. At the borders of the town. Where the wild goats were.

And Mara always brought the Bootleg Jesus with her. Everyone humoured her at first. Then, as the years passed, it became more of a sentimental habit. “Mummy and Daddy don’t have to come with us, Bootleg Jesus will watch over us as we eat and play… haha…”

Everyone knew it wouldn’t work, right?

Years.

They remove the veil childhood had over knowing how the world really runs.

Mara knew pain, now. She felt her brother’s.

Mara knew fear and hopelessness. She felt Sydney’s.

Mara knew dreams of being one with the earth, of feeling its ponderous power in her veins, of letting the power out through her to be free.

She and her brother ate goat water near the outskirts of the town. Sydney was absent.

Again.

Ivan’s knuckles were white as he sipped spoonful by spoonful, his eyes dark and fathomless, partially hidden by his dark hair.

Mara looked at him while she ate and winced. She was twelve now. She opened her mouth to speak.

“Ivan…”

“Don’t.”

She sighed, wincing.

They both knew why Sydney wasn’t here with them; she was apprenticed with Mr. Stewart, who demanded long and hard hours. Meeting together was a “childish thing”, a thing of the past. She had better things to do.

But that wasn’t true, was it? They both knew what was really going on behind closed doors, in Mr. Stewart’s house, to Sydney. She’d told Ivan, and then Mara; and Mr. Stewart was a friend of Sydney’s family, and they went back a long way. No one would believe her if she said anything, Sydney knew, what with her mother and her father and their fights.

The next time they managed to meet to have goat water Mara stared at the Bootleg Jesus, a childhood comfort, accusingly.

“Weren’t you supposed to protect us?” she squeaked, not wanting even the wind to hear, so embarrassed was she to still hold onto this faint hope.

She slapped it.

Light and gears sputtered to life, and the Bootleg Jesus’s head went down and up.

Mara sprang onto her bare feet. A strong breeze blew up, and she held her long black hair down with one hand, her brown skirt back with another.

Ivan and Sydney looked her way, expressions curious.

She kicked it.

Again light and gears sputtered to life, and the Bootleg Jesus’s head went down and up.

“WHAT?” Ivan said, springing to his feet as well.

Mara fell to her knees before it, taking it in her arms, then setting it down carefully.

“J… Jesus, do you love me?” she asked it, her voice tremulous, her mind back in the cluttered, unused garage, when she still had her naïveté and her heart was untarnished by life’s darker corners. Where she’d thought about godhood.

The bootleg Jesus lit to life again, bowing its head. A tinny voice. “Yes, Mara.”

Ivan approached. “So what’s inside it? What’s the key thing that makes it run?”

“…You wanna open it up down to its nuts n’ bolts and destroy it to find out? Because I don’t see anyone here who knows how to take it apart and put it back together,” Sydney said.

And all the way home, Mara smiled a gentle, private smile, like she and the Bootleg Jesus that she held in her arms, all the way home, shared something special.

“Mara!” her brother called loudly.

She was in the yard, picking out some garlic for this evening’s meal of goat water.

“It’s not working,” he yelled. The Bootleg Jesus.

She got off her knees. “Let me try.”

In the garage, sitting at a table, she said gently, smiling, “Jesus, are you there?”

It came to life, white robe going bright, neon rays from the heart glowing, the head bobbing down and back up. “Yes,” it said in that tinny voice. Then the lights went out, and it stopped moving.

Ivan slapped the table in frustration. “See, it only likes you.”

Mara’s smile went wider. “Maybe because I’ve always had faith.” She turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Mara turned back.

“Ask it for me, then.”

“Ask it what?”

“Will Sydney and I ever get married? Will we get Mr. Stewart to stop?”

“Jesus…”

It lit up, head bowing. “Yes… and no.” It went dark.

Ivan bolted out of his seat and marched out of the garage, punching the door to the house as he passed.

The house rumbled slightly.

“What was that? Earthquake?” She heard her mother wonder out aloud.

“In this area?” she heard her father say.

Mara was the only person who went to the outskirts of the town with the Bootleg Jesus that day.

And the next.

Ivan came outside with Mara this time.

Ivan paced back and forth through the lush grass around the bust of the Bootleg Jesus. “So you work, huh? Huh! Well, then tell me this!” he pounced before the bust, snakelike, hissing.

His bottomless brown eyes shone like brown diamonds with the tears in them. “Then tell me what to do about Sydney. She hurts. I hurt. But she hurts more. People hurt her. I want her there when I tell my parents about us, I want her to be able to come out here with me whenever she and I want – what to DO ABOUT THAT?”

The bust of Jesus sputtered with light from within, the head bowed back and forth and a mechanical, tinny voice spoke. “Lose the battle. Win the war.” The light from within sputtered out; it went still.

Mara smiled. Ivan stayed, where he crouched, thunderstruck, fingers gripping green blades of grass, before the Bootleg Jesus.

The next day Mara was out, alone again.

Her bowl of goat water lay in the grass, the sun starting to descend. She’d been out here for hours, crying.

“Jesus…”

The Bootleg Jesus lit up.

“What… can I do about Ivan and Sydney? I mean, can I make Mr.Stewart stop?”

“Yes.”

“…How?”

“Force.”

“What do you mean?

The Bootleg Jesus’s dreadlocked head bobbed up and down, the whites of its eyes electric-white. “Do what your heart desires.”

Mara gasped. Hastily, she wiped tears from her eyes. “Will he die?”

“Yes.”

“Will I die?”

“No.”

“Is it worth it?”

“…yes.”

Do what your heart desires… crumble and destruction… death and victory…

Grabbing onto her dark hair from both sides, Mara raised her head and screamed to the sky. The bowl flew away. The ground beneath her rumbled, a nearby tree shuddering its green leaves.

Mara walked up the steps to Mr. Stewart’s porch—were those cracking sounds coming from underfoot?—and banged open the flydoor and inside door to Mr. Stewart’s house, the flydoor rattling on its hinges.

She saw Mr. Stewart inside. In a pair of pants and undershirt. He watched her approach.

He wasn’t one to mince words. “What do you want.”

She walked right up to his face. “Leave. Her. Alone.”

Silence.

He scowled.

Then Mr. Stewart roughly took her arm. And that was it.

Then it seemed like Mr. Stewart wasn’t trying to grab her, he was trying to let go. He started to shake. Then he began to convulse. His eyes rolled back ’til you could see the whites; he fell onto a couch seat.

Mr. Stewart had set something in motion inside Mara, and it wasn’t going to stop now.

She had been staring at Mr. Stewart all this time, and she had been hyperventilating. She couldn’t… stop.

Behind the house, she heard a teeth-rending crack. Mr. Stewart’s house seemed to have picked up on his shaking; she looked about wildly.

Mara ran to the door. As her foot stepped in the doorway, a crack split the floor under her feet in half. She jumped down the stairs, onto the ground. The split went into the house, and other cracks branched away from it, taking over the whole house. Windows splintered. The upper floor groaned like it needed to eat, and started caving in alarmingly, warping the roof. Neighbours were coming out of their houses, pointing, shouting and a couple were screaming.

She looked up, past the whole house, to the mountain face that was behind it. And saw the crack in the rock above. Rocks of various sizes were breaking free and pounding down on the house’s roof. She held her breath. The crumbling seemed to stop. Then she realized what it was that was making this all happen.

Her.

She let her breath out in a scream, a scream to release all holding back, all fear, to let the wild things out – or the wild things in. The cracking of the mountain behind the house thunderclapped the air, and huge rocks began to fall. The house rumbled down to its foundation, crushed from above.

People scattered, really screaming for their lives now. But nothing hit them. Nothing hit Mara, either.

Mara simply stared. All the pressures of growing older—and never being old enough for your autonomy—and the ways adults around her had abused that notion… all of it inside her. Calm.

She could smell the goat water being made by her mother from the front gate. She eyed a green onion in the garden as she passed and it unrooted itself, trailing her. Her mother froze as she ascended the back steps into the kitchen.

She’d heard, then. Seen. She knew.

The spoon her mother was stirring the pot with lifted from her hand and went into Mara’s. “Let me.”

Lips trembling, her mother stepped back.

Mara put the spoon down and took hold of the green onions still hanging in the air, turning the tap on to wash them. When that was done, she took up a knife—which caused her mother some consternation—and started chopping them, then put them in the pot to cook.

“You always cooked it for me… so many times… I know it by heart now.”

“…Mara…” her mother said, voice trembling.

“Yes?” Mara turned, fingering the knife.

Her mother swallowed.

Mara noticed her mother eyeing the knife and put it down gently. She smiled slowly.

Her father walked carefully up behind her mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders. “You’re… such a big girl now…” he attempted.

“Not so big,” Mara said. “Ivan and Sydney are older.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” her mother said, swallowing nervously again.

Her mother stood tall and lifted her chin, lips trembling. “We’ve never hurt you,” she said, trying to be strident.

“No… no you never did. Not you. Not Daddy.”

“You know you can always talk to us,” he said, a strained smile on his features.

“Not about everything, though,” Mara said.

Ivan and Sydney burst upon the scene.

“Mara!”

Mara’s head snapped to see her brother and Sydney behind her, coming up the stairs. The knife lifted from the counter to point at her parents in the blink of an eye. The house rumbled slightly. The air thrummed.

“C’mon, now, Mara,” Ivan said, a cautious laugh, “put the knife down.”

Mara sighed. The knife went back to its place on the counter. The air went still.

“You ain’t gonna hurt anybody now,” Ivan said.

Mara nudged her face towards her parents. “They think I might.”

“No they don’t,” Ivan said, his voice getting louder. “They don’t think you’ll hurt them. Right?”

They nodded.

“Ivan,” Mara said, “Why don’t you tell mom and dad what you wanted to say for so long now?”

Ivan’s lip trembled.

“Well?”

His gaze went to the white floor. “Not like this,” he mumbled.

“Now’s a good time as any.”

Ivan stepped forward, holding Sydney’s hand. He took in a deep breath. “Mom, Dad, Sydney and I love each other. I’d love to marry her someday and I hope that we can have your blessing… now that Mr. Stewart can’t hurt her no more.”

“You have our blessing,” Mara’s father said.

They stood in silence. Mara sighed, turning to look out the kitchen window.

“Well, now what, Mara?” Ivan said. “You have all the cards.”

“No I don’t,” she said softly. She turned back to the kitchen. “I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Why not?” Ivan retorted.

“Here’s a place where no magic can be, yet here I am, manifesting. There’s people out there who know what I can do. They’ll know about me soon enough. There’s places for people like me. You don’t see people like me in public for long.”

“Mara…” her brother started.

“You know it, and I know it,” Mara said. “I have to go.”

“What… what can we do for you?” her father said. Her mother looked near tears.

“You can give me a bowl of that goat water, to go,” she said. “It was always what kept the three of us together.”

“Anything else?”

“The Bootleg Jesus,” she said, a warm smile finally coming to her face.

“I can give you the backpack with the sleeping bag in it,” her father said. “Not like we needed to camp out here with the stars, the open sky…” he caught himself, and coughed.

“I’ll get it,” Ivan said, ducking out of the room.

Mara’s mother began weeping silently, then stepped forward to prepare the soup for her.

“I don’t want you to go,” Sydney said, stepping forward to embrace Mara. She shed tears on Mara’s shoulder for some minutes, before breaking away, wiping at her nose.

“Here, take my poncho,” Ivan said, coming back, dropping the items on the floor.

She didn’t hug her parents as she took the soup and outfitted herself, although her mother looked like she was finally unafraid enough and wanted to do it for all the world. She did hug her brother though.

“Where’s the… oh.” Sydney said as the Bootleg Jesus floated into view.

Mara walked out the door, and down the steps. The sun was maybe a couple of hours from setting, but still hung low enough to set an orange glow across the sky.

The front gate opened of its own accord, and Mara stepped out.

This was all she knew for her entire life. And, just like that, she was unfit to stay here. She’d always been a keen reader, and what technology they had—like television—she knew that it took a massive Gift to do what she’d done today.

The Gift of those considered gods. Townships developed around them. People worshipped them. But they were hard to find, and they might show up in the public consciousness for a while, but just like that, their presence winked out and disappeared.

But she was all of twelve. And yet unafraid.

She looked back to her home. All that stood between her and it was the Bootleg Jesus, bobbing in the air. And it was fitting, in more ways than one.

It started with you, she thought, looking at it, lit up and ready for questions.

Would she ever get the time to control her Gift? Would she be allowed to? How far did her Gift go? Would she ever find out?

She looked forward, to the sky, then to the ground. They were all that stood between her now.

A god.

Mara took one step away from home, and then another.

Author’s Note: If I recall correctly, it was the simplest of things – and this has happened before, for example, with the Ace Of Knives: a name of a player while I was gaming. They had the name Bootleg Jesus and it was a title and an idea generator. What is a Bootleg Jesus? etc.

Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Simeon Daniel and Ray Bradbury, which may tell you a little something about her. She is a 2017 and 2018 Rhysling nominee, and has been longlisted in the 2015 Carter V. Cooper(Vanderbilt)/Exile Short Fiction Competition. Her fiction is used in Nisi Shawl’s workshops as an example of ‘code switching’, and in Tananarive Due’s course at UCLA, which has featured Jordan Peele as a guest lecturer. She is also the Senior Editor of Abyss & Apex magazine. You can find her blogging at http://Spiderlilly.com, on Twitter at @somesillywowzer, or on Patreon at www.Patreon.com/TonyaLiburd

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DP FICTION #52A: “The Ceiling of the World” by Nicole Crucial

This is important. When Margaret moved to the city, you see, the office she worked in was on the top floor, five stories up. The train took twenty-five minutes to travel between Bleek Street—where her office was—and Swallow Avenue—where she lived. She took a room in a basement, and that basement room was ten feet below the ground, and through the eighteen-inch windows at the top of the room, daylight filtered in. The reassuring whisper-hum of the underground trains tickled the soles of her feet every few minutes.

She’d kept hearing the city was growing. She figured, that’s where the jobs are—so she’d moved there. And yes, it was true, there were all kinds of jobs. You could be a copywriter, or a production assistant, or a construction worker, or pharmaceutical saleswoman, or a waitress at a fancy restaurant, or a waitress at a cheap diner, or a mail woman, or a graphic designer, or a barista, or a zookeeper, or a city planner, or an executive assistant, or a plumber, or an engineer, or a nail technician, or a food truck driver. That was part of the excitement: the possibility. The city was big enough for anything, bold enough to swallow anyone and spit back out a well-adapted spider monkey to climb the skyscrapers. Folks moved with an animal grace through the streets, stepping lithe around the potholes and trash, extracting quarters from their pockets without fumbling when the homeless people jangled their coffee cups.

She’d liked the office with the view—the bumpy horizon of skyscrapers, historic and glassy-obsidian-new; the obstructed but beautiful sky; the surrealist haze that lingered and that was equal parts factory, cigarette, and vape shop. She’d taken the job at the office with the view without really knowing what the job was about. It had something to do with spreadsheets and calendars. It didn’t much matter what she did.

“Every morning I walk out of the train platform, and I look straight up and can hardly take my eyes off the ceiling of the world till I walk inside the building,” Margaret told her mother.

The five-story building was a walkup, and Margaret didn’t mind. She hummed in the stairwell, failing to count her steps.

This is important. She was distracted and dying to be enchanted. So it took her a while to notice.

One evening Margaret came home and descended the stairs to her basement alcove. Her legs were powerful now, after a few weeks of climbing those five stories, the stairs to the subways, this path to her bed.

At the bottom, she put her foot down, expecting the tile floor. Instead her pump found the slick edge of another worn stair. She stumbled, barely caught herself on the railing in time to avoid a face plant.

Strange, she thought.

“These godforsaken shoes,” she said to her mother on the phone.

The light falling from the high, squat windows seemed a little dimmer.

She noticed, eventually, that where once she’d only been able to hum her favorite Johnny Cash song’s chorus three times while claiming the stairs at work, she now could almost finish a fourth repetition.

Outside the gilt-edged windows in the historic office building, the construction workers and cheap diner waitresses and engineers looked a little smaller.

“Nothing is ever finished, is it?” said her boss, dropping a stack of papers on Margaret’s desk.

The factory-cigarette-vape shop haze shimmered outside the windows.

This is important—or rather, it’s not. In the evenings, when she got home and eased her heels carefully over the unexpected last step into the basement, Margaret could not have told you what she’d done all day.

She noticed the clock more now. How the quiet, stuffy minutes in the train seemed to stretch out between the stops, unfurling, leisurely, absent-minded. When she looked up from the sidewalk, the edges of buildings hemmed the once-unbounded ceiling of the world, the perspective making them narrow dramatically toward the sun.

Mail began coming in bins, directed to the “6th floor.”

“Should we change our address on the website?” asked Margaret, who, she remembered in this moment, was in charge of such things. “Facebook?”

“What do you mean?” asked her boss. He pointed to the website open on her computer—6713 Bleek Street, 6th floor. “It’s always been the sixth floor.”

Margaret read every address on every piece of mail backward, from the bottom line up, to be extra sure that her brain wasn’t automatically filling in a number. Still, the number 6 made her bones feel brittle, fragile. She was glad she took the 8 train home.

In her basement room, which she swore now sat two steps lower into the ground, she heard the train passing the wall directly next to her bed. Strange. It didn’t seem like sinking two steps should bring her bedroom latitudinal with the train.

But, you see, she liked how the rumble had moved from under her feet to level with her chest as she faced the wall at night. It began to feel like the gentle but deep vibrations of a snoring lover, perched next to her under the sheets.

On a Thursday night, she went out. The bar she ended up at was three blocks from her heightening office, a puzzling intentional mix of hole-in-the-wall-dive and classily dim-lit, marble surfaces.

She sat alone at the bar stirring a gin and tonic until some man decided she looked lonely enough. It was an accurate observation. He settled into the stool on her immediate left.

“Where are you from?”

It was a question no one had ever asked in her hometown.

She gave its name; added, sheepishly, as one was supposed to do if they hadn’t been raised in the city: “It’s just this little town. I moved to the city a few months ago.”

“Oh? What for?” he said, rolling the tiny straw from his drink between his thumb and forefinger. It was not a frenetic motion—it was something unhurried.

This was where she was supposed to say what her job was, or admit she had attended an expensive university here. Even though she knew this, Margaret found that the question clotted in her ears, plugged her throat.

“I work on Bleek Street,” she said. She was changing the subject; the man did not know this.

“Oh—I work two blocks over.” He held her eyes. Margaret noticed, startled, that he’d looked her straight in the eye for their whole conversation.

He smiled, a toothy, guileless, out-of-place smile. As if the proximity of office spaces were a serendipitous coincidence, not the rational result of two people wanting to drink after work and not wanting to take a train across the ever-widening midtown expanse just for that. Margaret stared at him, the pads of her fingers dripping condensation on her glass. She felt as if she were on the train again. Trapped in the split second of darkness and encroaching bodies in which she feared, irrationally, that she would never get off, that this was eternity. That the moment would never end, or if it did, that it would never leave her.

“Have you noticed the buildings?”

“The buildings,” he repeated.

“They’re… growing.”

“Growing?” He leaned closer, placing his palm on the stool that separated them to steady himself.

Strange: a stool, separating them.

“And sinking,” Margaret continued, unable to stop herself. “And moving further apart. The train takes longer. The underground sank deeper.”

He tilted his head.

“Buildings,” he said again. “Growing.”

In the coming months, her office changed its address from the 6th floor to the 7th, then the 8th, 9th, 10th. It remained a walk-up.

Four more stops appeared on the train between Bleek Street and Swallow Avenue. The stairs leading down to Margaret’s basement room added a platform and doubled back in a second flight, and she had to crouch while descending in darkness. No more light reached her from the small windows.

She didn’t see the man from the bar again. He’d entered his number into her phone and texted himself from it—a process that made her wrinkle her nose, but remain silent. But when she looked in her messages later, the conversation had disappeared. All her conversations had disappeared.

Above her, the trains whispered and hummed. The vibrations fell on her as gossamer-light and chilling as spiderwebs.

When she called her mother, the line rang indefinitely. She didn’t pick up; no robotic voicemail came to save her from the anxiety-adrenaline of waiting for the next ring, the silent begging for a dial tone.

Margaret waited for almost an hour, letting each ring saw on her nerves as if a nail file on a piece of string.

“I miss you,” she said between tones.

Ring.

“I met a guy,” she tried. It felt hollow and she was glad, for a moment, that there was nobody on the line. She shook her head, hung up, and redialed: a clean slate.

Ring.

“I read a poem once—”

Ring.

“—something about, you know, city as lover.”

Ring.

“Like how people are home.”

Ring.

“Um, okay, that’s not important.”

Ring.

“This is important.”

Ring.

“Do you remember when I was little?”

Ring.

“And I counted the cracks in the ceiling—”

Ring.

“Every night before I slept.”

Ring.

“There were seventy-seven.”

Ring.

“I can’t find cracks to count anymore.”

After that, the phone stopped ringing. Only the laden, breathing silence of a receiver, depositing soundbytes into some irretrievable void. Maybe at least the phone company was recording. It comforted her to think that somewhere her voice was frozen, trembling over the syllables in “seventy-seven.” Finally a number that couldn’t change.

A growing city requires all kinds, devours all kinds. Margaret passed the storefronts, caught the job classifieds in her periphery as she handed the morning paper to her boss. You could be an instigator, or a message, or a cookie tin containing only buttons, or a nosejob critic, or a law, or a grocery store mapmaker, or an Internet hoax, or a governess, or a pushpin collector, or a pocket square, or a bottle, or a ringbearer, or a liar, or a mathematician, or a lying mathematician, or a butterfly effect.

That was part of the excitement: the possibility. The city was big enough for anything, bold enough to swallow anyone. Something about a primate with a prehensile tail. And you see, these days, you really needed to climb, and you really needed that extra limb to hold on with. There was nothing to do but climb. There was nothing to do but be swallowed.

Margaret did something with spreadsheets and calendars. It didn’t much matter what she did.

On a Monday morning, six months after Margaret moved to the city, she stepped onto the sidewalk after a three-hour train ride.

She looked up at the ceiling of the world. She hadn’t been able to sigh about it to her mother for six weeks. Above her, a tiny misshapen circle of sky and an edge of blinding sun peeked from the encroaching gargantuan skyscrapers. The sky was more brick than blue now.

Margaret opened the door in her office building. She took a deep breath.

She began the climb. She did not hum, because she knew if she did, her voice would give out on the way up. She failed to count her steps.

She was distracted and enchanted to be dying.

This is important.

Author’s Note: I was living in New York City for a summer internship. Unsurprisingly, I felt like a very small and young and alone person in a very big city. Unlike other places I’d lived, New York only seemed to get bigger with time—not smaller—and I thought, what if that was literal? This piece was a way for me to work out my loneliness and frustration, the disappointment with myself and with the environment I was in. I’ve since gone happily back to living in and writing zany, semi-magical fiction about the South.

Nikki Kroushl (writing as Nicole Crucial) is finishing up her senior year as a student of various dark arts (one of them creative writing) at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She writes fabulist fiction and self-indulgent personal essays. She is far too enthusiastic about planners, punctuation, pasta, caffeine, and Instagramming her cat. Read more of Nikki’s work at nicolecrucial.com.

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