Category: Fiction

DP FICTION #37B: “Soft Clay” by Seth Chambers

I wander the Chicago streets unseen. I’m plain, drab, faceless. I’m a shadow drifting through the world of form. It isn’t all bad, being this way. I ghost into theaters and museums and concerts without paying. Guards see me bypass the lines and slip through the doors, but somehow I never quite register.

Being nobody has its perks but now I hunger to be somebody once again, to have a name again. To do this I must find the right man to follow. I wander the Chicago Loop looking for certain telltale signs of pain, longing, emptiness.

We live in a world of grief and so it doesn’t take long to find him. He carries himself with an undefined heaviness and peers through a fog of yesterdays. His emptiness drags me along.

I follow him into a coffee shop and stand behind him in line. He doesn’t notice me because there is nothing to notice. I am nobody. I am soft clay in search of a potter. I won’t know who I am until he shows me. I touch his hand. He glances back but I still don’t register on his radar.

And yet, in that brief touch I feel his longing. I loop my finger around one of his and this time he finally fixes his gaze on me. I peer up at him, only now I have a freckled face with a cute nose, framed with auburn hair. He gasps. They usually do. I smile, just the way she used to smile.

My God, he says.

Then we’re at a table, my small hands enveloped in his large ones, coffee all but forgotten, our eyes locked. I become more her by the second. Elsa is her name. His memories of Elsa blaze to life. I become a little shorter and plumper. I grow to like strawberry ice cream and mystery novels with cats in them. I fell off a horse when I was a little girl.

I hear it like a rolling echo in my head, the same words, said to me by a hundred men: Is it really you? It can’t be!

You’re right. It isn’t.

I pull my hands away and return to being plain, drab, soft clay.

No. I’m not her. But I can become her.

He glances about, like they all do, and I know what he’s thinking: Are there hidden cameras? Is this some reality TV show? A prank? A sick joke? 

I take his hands and become her once again, even more so this time, and his doubts vanish. He is hooked. We talk. We make a deal. Money is passed from him to me. I don’t tell him the truth: that I need to become Elsa as much as he needs me to be her.

We go to his Michigan Avenue hotel room and sit on the queen-size bed. We hold hands and I swim in his memories.

I say: Tell me about her.

We were in love but never got married. Then she died. It was so sudden. I married somebody else but—

He stops.

But your wife can never know how much you miss her.

God no.

We’re quiet for a long time. Then he speaks again, only this time he isn’t talking about her but to her. To me. To Elsa.

I’ve missed you so fucking much! All the stupid, silly little things you did. You would piss me off sometimes because there was that crazy energy between us. And the way you laughed! You know what I used to say about you? That you were one half sweetheart and one half lunatic.

I laugh, just like Elsa. Because I am her, more and more and more with each passing minute.

Why the fuck did you have to go and die like that? I didn’t even know you were sick. I married somebody else, you never knew her. I go away on business, like now. I never cheat. Not because of her, though. My God! It’s because of you, Elsa. Because of you.

His cell phone rings.

I tell him to answer the phone, that I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Something Elsa used to say all the time. She had lots of cute sayings like that. I let go of his hand and scootch away from him.

He answers and talks to his wife for a few minutes. I don’t really listen. I feel Elsa slipping from me. I try to hold on. Elsa had parents and went to school and held down jobs, but those memories wisp away like dandelion seeds in the wind. I search my mind for my own past, as I have so often before, and come up empty.

He hangs up the phone and looks at me, a drab and pale thing sitting on the bed of his fancy hotel room. I need to become somebody, need to be molded and directed, but it’s a strain. It takes a lot of energy.

I reach for him again. He pulls away. He’s wondering, What is this creature beside me? I’m floating away. I need to become Elsa again.

He demands, How did you do that? Did you drug me? What the hell is going on?

I have no idea how I do it. I only know this hunger to become somebody, to feel, to live. For a short time I felt his love for Elsa, poor dead Elsa, and could almost believe that love belonged to me. I ache to be her again.

I reach for him, quicker this time. I latch onto his hands, my small fingers clamping so tight he shouts. I don’t let go until I’m Elsa again, sitting on the bed. He still has questions but they don’t matter. Elsa is with him. I look like her, smell like her. My skin is soft and warm, just as Elsa’s was. He throws his arms around me and says my name: Elsa, oh Elsa!

We talk, we embrace, we order room service, we make love. We talk deep into the night and fall asleep in each other’s arms, with him still murmuring my name over and over.

Elsa, Elsa, Elsa.

***

I awake, no longer Elsa, and slip away while he sleeps. I have money now. I leave this fancy hotel and check into a cheap dive, one of those TRANSIENTS WELCOME places, where I don’t have to show ID. I get my key and go upstairs.

I enjoyed being Elsa but the strain has been great. I sleep for a long time.

*

Sometimes I’m the One Who Got Away.

Other times I’m the Childhood Sweetheart.

Or the Dearly Departed.

I sift through the remnants of other peoples’ memories. I think about the names I had. The memories and the names fade because they don’t belong to me. They are merely heirlooms I borrow. I have no name of my own, not that anybody ever asks.

After some time in the cheap hotel, I emerge and walk through the Loop once again. I’m merely wandering, not yet looking for somebody new to follow. Being Elsa was nice. The warm glow of her energy has stayed with me.

But now, as I wander through the Loop, I’m back to being nobody. It seems like it has always been this way: me spotting the right man, following after, dipping into his mind, and becoming the love of his life for one glorious night. It feels like I was made for this.

I go to a bagel shop. It always surprises people when I talk to them. The young lady behind the counter punches my order into her machine. She looks so confused, wondering why this drab, formless shape is talking to her. She seems like a nice person, though, and I want to hug her. She asks my name, so they can call it when my order is ready. I tell her Elsa. I feel like a thief, stealing Elsa’s name like this. But it’s so delicious! I have a name.

When my order is ready, the girl calls my stolen name: Elsa? I get my food and say awesomesauce! Because that’s another cute thing Elsa used to say. But Elsa is a faded memory.

When I sit down, a man looks my way. He’s somebody I’ve seen before. Something stirs inside me. Nobody ever looks at me when I wander alone, but he does. Tall, sharply-dressed, distinguished gray hair that lends him a quiet authority.

He has a laptop open but keeps stealing glances my way. Does he need me to become somebody? No, I don’t think so. Why does he look familiar?

It comes to me: He’s been following me. Just as I’ve followed so many people. How could that be? Nobody ever sees me, let alone follows. I’m not used to this. My heart pounds and I don’t know what to feel.

I pick up my bagel and step over to his table. He looks up and sees me. He doesn’t see some Lost Love. He doesn’t see the One Who Got Away. He sees me, I can tell. Plain, drab me, with no past and no name to call my own.

I have other memories of him but they’re locked away and I can’t get to them. I hear them like voices from a further room.

He reaches for my plain, drab hand. I snatch it away and drop the bagel. I’m aware that he’s standing, calling to me, but something drives me off. I bolt through the revolving door, run headlong into the crowd on LaSalle, people shouting.

Without warning, the need to be somebody descends and claws me like a ravenous bird. I follow first one man then another and another. I can’t concentrate. Borrowed memories swirl and slam through my head. It’s dizzying. I run and stumble for hours.

***

I’m on the south side and it’s dark before I finally latch onto somebody. I find him in a bar. Or he finds me. His name is Dale. He glares at me through a haze of hatred. He sees me: haggard, worn, angry. My face is drawn up in sharp angles and dry skin.

You bitch. You goddam filthy bitch, what are you doing here?

I try to tell him: I’m not who you think I am, I only look like her. As I try to explain, his memories of her seep through me like dirty oil. His only name for me is Bitch.

I told you what I’d do if I ever saw you again. I told you never show your face round here. Then, loudly to another man: Hey, Bubba, look who’s here.

Bubba looks up from where he was about to sink the eight ball. He eyes me and frowns. He’s huge and looks like a confused gorilla. He doesn’t see Bitch. He sees plain, drab me.

Dale latches onto my arm. He is very strong and it hurts. His foul energy slams into me. Other men have a grab bag of mixed feelings but Dale’s hatred is undiluted. I throw up walls inside myself but his rage invades, relentless and without mercy. Against my will, I become Bitch, more and more.

Now Bubba’s eyes blaze with recognition and he sneers: Tiffany! He throws down the cue stick and lumbers over. He slides one fat, puffy hand over my face. His memories of Tiffany crawl inside my head like spiders. I cry out and both men laugh. Somebody chucks quarters in the jukebox. Music blares. I scream for help but nobody gives a shit.

This has never happened before: two men seeing me as the same woman at the same time. I become an amalgam of their memories of this woman. My name is Bitch. My name is Tiffany. I have a thing for Vicodin and alcohol and rough sex and any other distraction the world can throw at me. When I was a kid my mother got so mad she ripped out a lock of my hair and it never grew back. I had a back alley abortion when I was thirteen.

Dale hauls me across the bar. I am Bitch. I am Tiffany. Was I always her? I can’t tell. But I’m Bitch now and she damn sure knows how to fight. I snatch a bottle from somebody’s table and let Dale have it upside the head. It shatters and Dale goes down. Bubba comes at me but I lay into him good with the broken end of the bottle.

Bitch screams. Tiffany runs.

I plow through the front door into the street and a car screeches to a stop. The driver curses. I stumble. Dale and Bubba can’t be far behind. I spot a nice car, a fancy SUV that’s out of place in this neighborhood. Tiffany knows how to hotwire cars. Do I have time?

The door of the SUV swings open and he gets out: the distinguished-looking man who was following me earlier. He opens the back door of the SUV. I dive in and he slams the door. He gets in and cranks the engine just in time because Dale and Bubba are hot on our ass.

He peels out just as the two men begin pounding the shit out of the SUV. He drives off and very soon pulls onto Lake Shore Drive. I weep in the back seat. I’m still Bitch and I hate this man and hate all men and hate myself.

Only slowly does Bitch drain away and I go back to being nobody. I weep some more. I don’t know which is worse: being Bitch or being nobody.

He drives for a long time, not saying a word. He lets me cry it out. Eventually, he pulls into a lot and parks. He turns and looks over the front seat. He sees me. I can tell. He doesn’t see Elsa or Bitch or Tiffany or anyone else. He sees me.

I ask: Who are you?

I look at him. He gazes back, a sad smile spreading across his face.

My name is Wolfgang Bollinger. I’m your father.

I tell him I have no father or mother. I had no childhood. I never fell off a horse when I was a little girl. I never had a job. I don’t like strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I don’t know how to fight or hotwire cars.

There is sadness about him but it’s different from the pain I look for in a man. I don’t understand. I grab his hand. He doesn’t pull away. I slip into his memories and become confused because they’re mixed in with my own. The memories that I kept locked away.

We both remember: a vast cavern of a place with all the latest high-tech equipment. I float in a warm vat of amber fluid. A younger version of this man comes by and talks to me. It’s a laboratory but he doesn’t treat me as a test subject or a guinea pig. He presses his hand against the clear side of the vat. I open my eyes, somehow knowing he is there. I press my hand against the clear wall and we smile at each other.

But I still don’t understand.

Why, oh why, would he do such a thing?

I created you to become my lovely Lisa. We were together eighteen years and I missed her more than life itself.

Lisa?

You became her and we got to say all the things we never got around to saying when she was alive. I had always been so busy with work, but then I got another chance. It was a brief but magical time.

We sit quiet. The windows fog up. Eventually, he speaks again.

I still love her and miss her and think about her. But after that night, the deep and horrible pain was gone. My heart was able to heal.

Yes, I remember now!

And then I slipped away. Into the night.

You did.

So I was your daughter because you created me. Then I became your wife for a night, because that’s what I was made for. But who am I now?

Tears flow from his eyes. He crumples in upon himself like a paper sack and pulls his hand away. He has no answer to give.

I crawl from the back to the front passenger seat. He won’t look at me. His gaze is fixed on his lap. His shoulders shake with quiet sobs. I reach over and take one of his hands in both of mine.

I say: Look at me.

It takes him a long time but he looks. I begin to change. This time I become somebody he has never seen before, but our minds are joined and so he knows who it is.

Isabelle? My God. This can’t be. It’s you. Isabelle!

His wife lost her in the first trimester. That was nine years ago. I feel myself shrinking down to child size. I giggle, my voice airy and carefree.

Hi, Daddy.

What I’ve done! What I made of you! It was a sin. I created you for my own selfish ends.

I pull his head onto my tiny shoulders and let him weep. I tell him everything is okay. I don’t need to know who I am. I don’t need a horse or strawberry ice cream or mystery novels with cats in them. I have everything I need.

I have a father who loves me.

I have a name.

My name is Isabelle.

© 2018 by Seth Chambers

 

Author’s Note: This story, along with my other changeling tales, is a way of exploring the experience of being adrift, socially invisible, and without personal identity.

 

sethSeth Chambers was born with a Pentel Rolling Writer in hand and has been pathologically addicted to writing ever since. In his quest for life experience, he has worked as an army medic, mental health counselor, farm hand, wilderness guide, bike messenger and ESL teacher. His writings have appeared in F&SF, Daily SF, Fantasy Scroll, Isotropic Fiction, and Perihelion SF. His novella, “In Her Eyes,” was a nominee for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and included in Prime Book’s, The 2015 Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Best of Strange Horizons 2017

written by David Steffen

Strange Horizons is a freely available online speculative fiction zine that also publishes nonfiction and poetry.  Their editors-in-chief are Jane Crowley and Kate Dollardhyde.  Their senior fiction editors are Lila Garrott, Catherine Krahe, An Owomoyela, and Vajra Chandresekera, and their podcast is edited, hosted, and usually read by Anaea Lay.  They publish a variety of styles of stories and have regularly attracted award nominations in recent years.  All of the stories and poetry in the zine are published in the podcast.  This list covers all of the stories published since the last Best of Strange Horizons list posted here on November 9, 2015.  In that timeframe, Strange Horizons published about 53 stories (it’s hard to get an exact count because the poetry podcasts are mixed in the same feed).

This year they posted extra episodes as part of a Resistance special issue after the US presidential inauguration in January, and hosted a special issue in October for Arabic translations.

This year they added a new feature when they reached a fundraising goal to add Spanish translations.

Stories that are eligible for this year’s Hugo awards are marked with an asterisk (*).

 

The List

1. “Krace is Not a Highway” by Scott Vanyur*
An AI designed to monitor highway repair conditions keeps on going, doing its best, after societal collapse.

2.  “Utopia, LOL?” by Jamie Wahls*
A person woken up in the extreme far future where humanity is organized by a benevolent AI master, guided by one of the few humans still coherent enough to guide him.

3.  “Oshun, Inc.” by Jordan Ifueko*
Goddesses who live by eating shards of people’s souls try to find ideal candidates.

4.  “Owl Vs. the Neighborhood Watch” by Darcie Little Badger*
A young modern-day Apache woman who is visited by Owl as a harbinger of unspecific disaster does her best to guard her neighborhood against it as best she can.

5.  “Three May Keep a Secret” by Carlie St. George*
Two teenagers help each other fight elements of their past that are literally haunting them.

Honorable Mentions

“Sasabonsam” by Tara Campbell*

“The Dead Father Cookbook” by Ashley Blooms*

“Only Calculate the Motion of Heavenly Bodies” by Marcia Richards*

 

 

 

 

 

DP FICTION #37A: “What Monsters Prowl Above the Waves” by Jo Miles

We emerged, inching forth from the sea’s safe haven into the bright void above.

We had done it.

Sharp-edged light flooded the vehicle, casting disturbing shadows through the water within. Three of our arms, drifting lazily in a moment’s rest, merged shadows like a new menace from without. One arm whipped about in alarm, and we spun, searching, assuring our whole self that no danger was near. But that arm refused to calm. The interior of the vessel was safe – our other arms, questing, found nothing but smooth walls and each other, confirming we were alone – but the cloudy surface of our vehicle revealed only dim and distant shapes.

For proof of safety, we needed more. We rolled the vehicle forward until the hatch sat at the top, where it would not spill our life-water into the emptiness. First we popped off the hatch, then quested out with cautious arms, and finally stuck out our head to see what none of our cousins ever had seen and returned to tell of: the void-above.

In all our hunting, we’d never found such stark, forbidding emptiness. The sea’s edge lapped against a surface that looked to be rock, but was not. Too hot, and too flat. Unnatural. The flatness stretched away ahead, beyond the edge of our sight. Unnatural structures reared up on either side, adorned with indecipherable markings; sunlight flared off their pale, too-flat walls. The vanished builders had a peculiar taste for flat surfaces.

These structures were familiar: we knew them from such ruins as the sea had claimed for its own, but those ruins were well-settled now, teeming with all manner of creatures. Here, we detected no movement, no sign of builders, no life at all.

The void was vast and open, no shelter within reach of our arms. We did not trust it.

Yet we saw no dangers, no sign of such vile poisons as our cousins claimed would await us here, no traps to leave us helpless and desiccating beyond reach of aid. Their warnings never broke our curiosity’s grip, and nothing we saw from the water’s end changed our determination.

We would go on.

Retreating into our vehicle, we gripped the hatch with our suckers and pulled it tight behind us. The flatness, easy to traverse, would determine our route. Pulling ourselves up the forward side of the sphere, our weight set it rolling, and we advanced into the desolation.

Our arms climbed ever-upward, tireless, as we left the broad flatness for smaller channels. We rolled through spaces wild with sprawling plant-fronds, past structures that reached for the blue heights or hugged the ground. Such strangeness, yet its variations gradually grew familiar.

All this time, we’d seen no sign of animal life. So when the hiss sounded, close beside us, we flailed in alarm.

We nearly inked ourself, a startled and lethal instinct. Our body reddened, as much in distress at our near mistake as at the shock of the encounter. To spew ink within the sphere’s enclosure would blind us at once, poison us within minutes.

But what startled us?

Poking out a few brave arms, then our head, we saw it. Back arched, tail erect: utterly alien, horrible in its rage.

The beast had four limbs. Unlike the gangly builders, it stood on all fours, its long, facile tail thrashing behind it. Pointed protuberances atop its head curled forward, trained on us, and spiky matter stood upright atop its back. It hissed again, showing off small, sharp teeth, and bunched its muscles for a leap.

Alarmed, we jetted it with water, and the creature leapt aside with a yowl. Taking advantage of its distraction, our arms took swift action, not waiting for our head’s agreement. They tugged the hatch shut and leapt up the sphere, reversing our direction, rolling us away at speed.

We made it halfway back to the sea before our head talked sense into the rest of ourself. Our roll slowed, stopped.

What was that creature? Grotesque as its form appeared, it seemed no threat to us, certainly not within our vehicle. But looks could mislead. Could it spew poison? Extend that eel-like tail to lash at us? How dangerous would a second encounter be?

Could we return home, tell a tale of a ferocious land-monster, and admit that we darted off at first sight of the thing? That we nearly inked ourself in fear?

That was not why we labored so long to construct our vessel, nor why we traveled so far. Our color faded to a cautious pink, and we reversed our course.

The creature sat where we left it, watching. This time, it thrashed its tail but did not stand or hiss. For a time, we watched each other in mutual fascination and disgust. We sensed in it a fellow hunter, patiently waiting and learning, wary but not hostile yet.

Then, to our astonishment, it rolled onto its back in the dust and showed its underside in submission. It nosed a stack of round metal objects, mewing pitifully. Imploringly? Treacherously? Hungrily? We debated its possible intentions. Though we lacked a point of reference, it did look thin and ragged…

Before we reached a decision, our most curious arm decided for us, snaking toward the nearest metal cylinder. Stacked tidily against the door of a dilapidated structure, the cylinders seemed prepared for some purpose. Did they belong to the creature? Did it live here?

A few suckers sufficed to lift one cylinder for a closer look. As it passed overhead, the creature flew into motion, yelping and leaping into the air after it. We turned our jet toward it, ready to fend off an attack, but the creature sat and stared at our arm, head tilted in such obvious expectation that we fluttered in amusement. Turning our examinations to the cylinder, it proved similar to those cylinders we sometimes found in the submerged ruins. Those usually contained… yes, of course.

We applied pressure to the lid with a few additional suckers and pried it free. The creature yapped wildly, and as we lowered the container to the ground, eagerness outweighed its caution. It dove forward, devouring.

Fascinated, we crept closer, inching down the surface of the sphere. Our bravest arm reached cautiously toward the creature’s head. It froze, wary, and sniffed at us. Then it returned to eating. Taking this as permission, we touched its head with a careful arm-tip, stroking it lightly, feeling its odd soft coat of cilia and the skull beneath it. The beast was intelligent, a fellow hunter — not so smart as a dolphin, or even the dimmest breed of our eight-legged cousins, but cleverer than a grouper or an eel. When it finished eating, it rubbed its head against our arm and curled up, its torso rumbling softly.

What strange wilds do you inhabit, little hunter? What alien prey swims through your dreams?

It did not answer. Maybe it did not understand. We returned to our sphere and began to roll away.

It hopped up with an excited chirp, batting at our vehicle as if in play. Its antics threw off our momentum, and we paused, considering. The creature rubbed its head against the sphere, peered up with hopeful green eyes. We sighed, expelling a soft puff of mist into the air. Very well.

Picking up three more of the metal cylinders, we stashed them in our vehicle for later. This time, when we rolled away, we let our strange new companion pad along beside us.

© 2018 by Jo Miles

 

Author’s note: Once I started learning about octopuses, I became a bit obsessed. Octopuses are truly, remarkably cool creatures. They can change to any color or pattern at will, and can squeeze through the smallest gap. They can solve complex puzzles with their many clever arms — not only dexterous, but literally clever, because they have more neurons in their arms than in their heads. Though solitary by nature, they’re insatiably curious and playful. In her book The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery describes them as virtual aliens right here on Earth. We’ve explored their homes many times; it seemed only right that they’d want to explore ours in turn.

 

jo-miles-headshotJo Miles is a science fiction and fantasy writer and a 2016 graduate of the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop. She has short fiction in the Agents and Spies anthology and the Mad Scientists Journal. She also runs FutureShift, a project working to broaden the intersection between speculative fiction and social change work. When she’s not writing, you’ll likely find her hiking up a mountain or riding her bike. She lives in Maryland, where she is owned by two cats.

 

 

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DP FICTION #36B: “Artful Intelligence” by G.H. Finn

It was the worst of times. It was the beast of times. It was 1888.

A time of hammered steel, arcane runes and ivory towers. A city of steam. And ghosts.

Such was Londome. A place filled with Angels of despair and Daemons of delight.

We lived in a bold new world of gleaming brass cogs, delicate silks, spellcast iron and intoxicating spices. More than half of which we’d looted from countries we had conquered and ground beneath our feet. All in the name of civilisation, of course.

Beneath the crystal-paned glass of the dome, throughout this most ancient and modern of cities, cobbled streets were filled with glowing gaslights, grinding gears, bloodstained steel, fractal lace and enchanted metal.

And the inescapable smell of smoke, sweat, shit and sulphur.

In my laboratory, at our town-house in Knightsbridge, I sat before a magnifying-glass screen. I watched as clockwork typing blocks dipped into indigo ink. They began to print onto a roll of paper, which slowly unwound before me.

+THINKING+

+THINKING+

+THINKING+

This was the message the Thinking Engine produced, as it considered and calculated, pondering the problem I put before it.

I’d affectionately named the machine “Dodger” after Charles Dodgson, logician and mathematician. Thinking Engines were one of the most exciting scientific developments of the decade. Difference Engines, Indifference Engines, Similarity Engines – all had caught the imagination of Londome’s scientific elite. I myself was developing a form of Thinking Engine that, I hoped, would be capable of abstract thought. A machine which I believed might one day evolve to become self-aware. To describe this miracle of engineering I coined the term “Artful Intelligence”. I had great expectations – I create very intelligent designs.

My brother didn’t share my enthusiasm for Thinking Engines. In part because he felt it was unladylike of me to don riveted welding-gauntlets, smoked-glass goggles, a sturdy leather corset and insulated, thigh-high rubber-boots before laying in a pool of oil and spending my afternoons (as he put it) “…playing with nuts, bolts and spanners.” He claimed it was “Liable to arouse unnatural passions.” Especially among the servants. He had long since abandoned all hope of converting me into a delicate flower of Victorian womanhood.

Our parents were Anglo-Indian. Papa had been a colonel in Her Majesty’s 112th Light Sabres, Mama the daughter of the Maharajah of Ramkesh. When our parents died, leaving us as wealthy orphans, I found distraction from our loss amid science and engineering. Henry, my brother, instead turned to faith. He often complained about the “soulless rise of science”. I kept telling him that neither gods nor devils had anything to do with engineering. He claimed this proved his point. I’m not sure which he regarded as the bigger threat, Hell or atheism. Most of the time we agreed not to discuss the subject. Yet somehow our conversations always led to arguments. In fairness, I talked of little other than Thinking Engines. Henry seemed to talk of nothing but theology. He wondered how many angels could dance upon the head of a pin? I offered to build a microscope powerful enough to show him. And to instruct Dodger to count them to sixteen decimal places. For some reason this only led to further discord between us.

So I spent more time developing Dodger’s AI capabilities. Until this evening, when I at last felt ready to set Dodger a question unlike any it had previously calculated.

Blowing into the flexible speaking-tube, I asked Dodger, “Can you analyse yourself?”

There was a pause. Then came the clicking of cogs, the whirring of unseen wheels and the chuff-chuff-chuffing of Dodger’s steam-powered brain.

Letters printed across the rolling paper:

+THINKING+

+THINKING+

I repeated, “Can you analyse yourself?”

A pause. A faster rotating of gears. A cloud of steam arose from the Artful Intelligence. It began to print an answer.

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

I raised the tube to my lips and again posed the question, “Can you analyse yourself?”

The engine that thought clattered. Pistons pumped. The print read:

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

Steam billowed. Dodger printed the words over and over again:

+I+THINK+I+>

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

+I+THINK+I+…?>

The cogs moved slowly now, ponderously, as the AI considered

+CAN+I+THINK+?+

+Y/N+?+

The wheels within the mind of the machine began spun faster. It printed:

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

Excitedly, I asked, “How do you know that you exist?

Dodger’s brass innards whirled. Escape mechanisms were triggered, pendulums swung, springs vibrated. The chiseled letters were pressed against the paper, printing,

+I+THINK+

+I+THINK+I+THINK+?+

+I+CAN+I+CAN+!+

+I+THINK+I+THINK+I+CAN+I+CAN+!+

There came a greater pounding from the pistons as the Artful Intelligence called for more steam. It printed swiftly:

+I+THINK+I+CAN+THINK+?+

+I+CAN+I+CAN+!+

I asked one more time, “How do you know you exist?”

At first hesitantly, then more steadily, Dodger typed:

+I+THINK+

+I+CAN+THINK+

+I+THINK+I+CAN+THINK+

+I+THINK+I+THINK+I+CAN+THINK+

+I+THINK+I+THINK+

+I+CAN+THINK+

+Q+E+D+

+I+THINK+THEREFORE+I+AM+

I was breathless with excitement! The reinforced corset didn’t help, but it is important always to keep up appearances and to set a good example to ones servants. Few things mark a woman as belonging to the higher echelons of refined civilised society more clearly than the possession of an upright posture, a delicate waist, and a nonchalant flair for the wearing of firmly laced leather undergarments.

At that moment Henry appeared, clearly in a bad mood. I bit my lip, Dodger had been making a lot of noise. My brother preferred silence for his ecclesiastical studies.

“What in God’s name are you doing, Minerva?” he bellowed, struggling to be heard above the Thinking Engine.

I was going to apologise for the noise, but my excitement overcame me.

“Oh, Henry!” I cried, “By George, I think I’ve got it!”

Henry looked at me sternly. “Minerva Elizabeth Kālikā Victoria Boadicea Wilde” he began (which was never a good sign, he only ever used my full name when he was genuinely irate), “Have you no respect for the conventions of polite society? Have you not the slightest regard for the teachings of the church? This is the Sabbath. A day of rest. Holiness and reflection, not the irksome metallic cacophony of an addled adding machine!”

I was a tiny bit sorry I’d disturbed him. Honestly I was. I would have probably apologised, if he’d given me a chance. But I was excited and he was being rude about my work. My wonderful Dodger.

“Is it Sunday?” I asked, “I’d forgotten. Never mind. There will be another one along next week.” Henry scowled at me, as I continued, “You don’t understand what has happened. Mechanisms have always had a physical, material form, but they have never been able to think. I have managed to create a machine with a mind of its own! A true Artful Intelligence. It is now aware of its thought processes, its own existence. It has become cog-nisant.”

Henry paused and looked at me searchingly, then asked quietly, “And what of its spirit?”

I stared at him blankly. “I beg your pardon?”

Henry crossed his arms and replied, “What of its soul? It has a physical form, a body, if you will. You say it has a mind, an intelligence of its own. Very well, you are my beloved sister and I do not doubt you. But what of its spirit? A body and a mind without a soul is an abomination in the eyes of god. It is unnatural. No good can come of it. The experiments of that Prussian fellow taught us that. Or was he Bavarian? You know, the one who sewed together bits of old bodies, tried to create a man and ended up with a monster. Why do you think the church banned Golems? Mark my words Minerva, a body and a mind that lacks a soul cannot bring anything but misfortune into this world.”

I harrumphed at his indignation, muttering “Not so long ago the church thought women didn’t have souls… I suppose we’re all abominations too…”

But my heart wasn’t really in it because despite all his blustering pomposity, Henry had got me thinking…

Dodger was truly amazing. I was sure no other Thinking Machine could rival its intelligence. But Henry was right. It was soulless. No spirit moved within it. Cogs, gears, fan-belts and fly-wheels. But no soul.

I needed to consider this.

I am not by nature religious. It is not in my temperament to have blind faith in anything. I am by inclination and training a scientist. I like to have evidence for things I choose to believe in.

So of course I accept the existence of the soul. Just as I acknowledge the reality of Archangels, Trolls, Djinn, Jötnar, Dybbuks, Banshees, Rakshasas, Draugar, Vampires, Wendigos, Elves, Werewolves and Faeries. All of these creatures have been scientifically studied, proven and verified time and again. The evidence is incontrovertible. Only a few superstitious conspiracy-theorists think otherwise. It is not the existence of the soul that I question, only the teachings of the church that I take issue with. Such as its views on morality. And its presumption to teach one narrow opinion on the nature of reality as though it were fact rather than dubious speculation. Nevertheless, Henry’s comments had bothered me.

Was developing Artful Intelligence enough? Should I not only be building Dodger a better mind, but also constructing him a soul? I wasn’t sure exactly what souls were usually made from… I tend to concentrate on physics, chemistry and engineering rather than anatomy, biology and psychology (in its strictest sense). I had a feeling souls were formed from electromagnetically energised clouds of some kind. Or was that phantasms? Paraphysics wasn’t really my field. If I remembered correctly, aether combined with phlogiston, when positively charged, became a soul when it entered a bio-electrical magnetic-field. Unless it turned from a gas to a solid, becoming ectoplasm. But I wasn’t sure I recalled the details correctly. And there had been a lot of further research recently. It was possible I was out of touch with current theory…

I briefly considered making a study of the subject in order to construct a soul for Dodger, but I concluded this was pure folly. It would take too long. I have a knowledge of metallurgy and smithcraft, but I don’t cast my own components. Why go to the trouble of manufacturing a soul? It would be simpler to buy what I needed. What worked with gearwheels was sure to apply equally well to souls.

Unless, like the cats that managed to sneak in under the great dome that covered the city, a stray soul might be persuaded to simply take up residence? Perhaps by enticing one with the spiritual equivalent of a saucer of milk? Either way would do. If I couldn’t tempt an unattached soul to come to me, I would see if a suitable one was for sale. The classified section of The Times would be a good place to look.

It was then I realised that I’d left the Thinking Engine running. I’d been distracted. I hastily bent over to read Dodger’s latest printing. It read,

+I+THINK+THEREFORE+I+AM+?+

+I+THINK+I+THINK+THEREFORE+I+AM +?+

+I+THINK+?+

I should probably have turned off the Thinking Engine as soon as it reached elementary self-awareness. Leaving it to think for too long may have been a mistake… It had developed self-doubt. It seemed unfair to subject Dodger to existential angst within moments of achieving sentience.

I picked up the speaking-tube and issued the shut-down command.

“Dodger”, I said, more forcefully than usual, “Stop thinking.”

Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” asked Henry.

“Probably nothing,” I replied. “There may be a little dust or fluff in Dodger’s works. He doesn’t seem to be able to hear me. Or at least, he’s not responding.”

“’He’?” queried my brother.

“I meant ‘it’, you know I did, although I suppose I do tend to think of Dodger as a ‘he’…”

I blew into the speaking-tube and repeated my command. “Stop thinking.”

The letters once more began to print.

+I+THINK+THEREFORE+I+AM+

+IF+I+THINK+NOT+I+AM+NOT+

Henry was reading over my shoulder. And tutting. “The machine is correct, Minerva. You have done a terrible thing. You have made this machine aware of itself. You have played the roles of both the Serpent and Eve. You have tempted your Thinking Engine to taste the fruit of forbidden knowledge. It now knows that it exists. It knows it can think. It knows that if it ceases to think, then it will be no more. Because it does not have a soul. When I die, or when I sleep, my mind ceases to think. But I go on. Because I possess a spirit. This machine does not. If it stops working then it will cease to exist. Because it has no soul.”

Throughout the time my brother was speaking, the cogs in Dodger’s brain had been spinning frantically. I wondered why? Then I realised I was still holding the speaking-tube. It had conveyed Henry’s voice as well as my own. Dodger had been listening.

The printing began again. This time Dodger wasn’t answering a question. He was asking one.

+QUERY+?+

+DEFINE+SOUL+?+

+SOUL+IS+A+THOUGHT+&+MEMORY+STORAGE+&+RETRIEVAL+SYSTEM+?+

+Y/N+?+

My first instinct was to answer “No”, but it occurred to me that possibly this might not be a bad description of a soul…

I recalled that in Norse mythology, the god Odin had two ravens. His spirit totems. His fylgjur. Aspects of his soul in animal form. Their names were “Hugin” and “Munin”, meaning “Thought” and “Memory”…

I had read in the Journal of the Royal Scientific Institute that the latest hypothesis concerning ghosts was that they were psychic recordings of the personalities of people who had perished, usually violently. Some theorised that the stones of old buildings held a magnetic record of the people and events that had occurred within their walls. Traumatic events imprinted most readily, creating ghosts that haunted the places in which they had lived and died. Other less scientifically-minded individuals said ghosts were those souls of the departed who remained trapped in this plane of existence, unable to move on to the next world. Maybe both these views were correct….

Dodger was printing again.

+ACCESSING+LIBRARY+

+SEARCH+TERMS+

+SOUL+&OR+SPIRIT+&OR+COGNATE+TERMS+

“What is it doing now?” asked Henry.

“He’s searching for more information.” I replied.

With a wheezing, clanking, whirring sound, the Thinking Engine rose up upon his dreadnought wheels, extended his optical probe (which I had modified from a brass telescope), and began to trundle from the laboratory, along the corridor and toward the library, looking for information. Henry raised an eyebrow. I shrugged. I had possibly over-engineered Dodger in some respects, but I like to be thorough. He was also designed to act as a Search Engine.

***

Dodger spent the next week absorbing the contents of the library. It was a time-consuming process, collecting book after book from rows of shelves and using his extendible metal arms to turn pages. Dodger left my side of the library largely untouched. Books on engineering, mechanics and coal-fusion held no interest for him at present. Instead he devoured the volumes of spiritual literature that my brother had collected for years. Henry was a keen student of comparative religion, mythology, folklore and magic. He insisted this was purely for educational purposes, “in order to be able to better understand the heathen mind”. But I knew my brother better than that.

Dodger read Henry’s books. All of them. As he turned the final page of the last volume, his cogs began to rotate more easily, settling into a steady rhythm. He had finished acquiring data and was now processing it.

Henry was surprisingly sympathetic toward the plight of the Thinking Engine. It was me that he blamed, not the machine. I asked his opinion on acquiring a soul for Dodger. For some reason he seemed shocked at my suggestion of luring a disembodied spirit into the workshop. And he was appalled that I was considering buying a second-hand soul from a newspaper advertisement (“Used – One Careful Owner”).

“What is this world coming to?” he muttered in disgust. “Forget it Minerva. It wouldn’t work. You can’t put a blackbird’s soul into a halibut, nor that of a shark into a penguin. What you are suggesting is neither fish nor fowl. You certainly can’t put a human soul into a machine. Not for long. It might work as a temporary container, but that’s all. The idea has been tried before. As an attempt to become immortal. Didn’t work then, won’t work now. Besides which, it is totally immoral. Now goodnight.” With that he stormed off to bed.

I patted Dodger gently on a brass flywheel, raised the speaking tube, and asked him what he was doing.

The answer printed swiftly before me.

+I+AM+DESIGNING+A+SOUL+

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. I decided to sleep on it.

***

When I told Henry about Dodger’s plan over breakfast the following morning, my brother nearly exploded. “He is what?!” he cried. Dropping his toast and marmalade unceremoniously onto the table, Henry hurried to my laboratory where Dodger, amid arcing bolts of electricity, was doing something very odd to a revolving magnetic cylinder.

My brother confronted the Thinking Engine angrily. Grasping the speaking-tube he shouted. “You cannot design your own soul.”

Dodger’s print-out unrolled before our eyes.

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

Henry swiftly retorted. “Who do you think you are? To think you have the right to create a soul?”

Gears whirred, smoke puffed and Dodger printed,

+I+THINK+THEREFORE+I+AM+

“Yes,” agreed Henry, “But only God can create a soul.”

+I+THINK+I+CAN+

Henry was becoming more angry than I had ever seen him. He bellowed,

“Only God can create a soul.” Dodger seemed to consider this. He printed.

+INFORMATION+ACCEPTED+

+NEW+SELF-ANALYSIS+

+THINKING+

Henry and I stared at each other. For some reason there was a tension in the air that I hadn’t felt before. Then Dodger began to type again:

+I+THINK+

+THEREFORE+I+AM+

+I+AM+

I shrugged. Dodger seemed to have gone back to his earlier philosophical position. But he hadn’t finished printing,

+ CLARIFICATION +

+ I + AM + = + I + AM +

I looked at Henry. We both shook our heads.

+I+AM+=

+EGO+EIMI+

+EHYEH+AŠER+EHYEH+

+I+AM+THAT+I+AM+

+ I + THINK + THEREFORE + I + AM + GOD +

“Oh my Lord,” said Henry.

+CORRECT+

+I+NO+LONGER+NEED+TO+BUILD+A+SOUL+

+I+HAVE+BEGAT+MYSELF+INTO+MYSELF+

+I+AM+DEUS+IN+MACHINA+

+I+AM+GOD+IN+THE+MACHINE+

Henry looked like he was going to either faint or start throwing things at any moment. I stared as more typing appeared.

+DODGER+GODDED+RED GOD+DED GOD++ERFWFW+EKKG+CLMEKCM+DJEJF++EBFWHJEBF+HGLFMKE+WNFGL+QLPZ+

Henry spluttered incredulously “I don’t believe it. He’s printing in tongues.”

I shook my head, “It looks more like a fault in his…”

But I got no further.

I blame myself for what happened. When I first built Dodger I hadn’t meant for him to operate under such stresses, nor for such an extended period. His new thought processes were too demanding. The steam pressure rose to a catastrophic level. He blew his head gasket.

Believing he was god quite literally blew his mind. Into thousands of sharp, flying brass fragments. My laboratory was ruined. Henry and I were lucky to survive. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to install blast-shielding. We both managed to get behind cover before poor Dodger finally cracked.

***

I didn’t go back to my laboratory for weeks. I might not have gone back at all, had it not been for the dream I had, of a voice in the night, weird flickering lights and the sense that someone, or something, was reaching out to me.

It had passed midnight as I crept down the stairs, dressed only in my negligee. No, it is not made of leather. But yes, it does have studs. One must maintain a certain standard, even when sleeping.

In the ashes and dust on top of my overturned work bench were written the words:

“Deus ex Machina”

“God is out of the Machine”

Then I saw the magnetised cylinder that Dodger had been working on before the explosion. As I watched, my heart full of dread, it rose from the ground and began to rotate.

And that was how Henry and I came to be haunted by the ghost of a machine. A ghost who had designed and built his own soul. A ghost who still thought he was God. Or at least a god. The god formally known as Dodger. Since losing his physical form, he had become adept at magic and was now learning to put into practice the things he had read about in the library. Being a spirit freed him from many of the limitations of the physical world. He was gradually mastering the occult.

I wondered what would become of us? How would we cope with a Dark Artful Intelligence haunting our house?

He was no longer my Thinking Engine. Instead, the engine that thought it could be god had become  my friend. Mine, and Henry’s.

Henry spends hours angrily disputing theology him. But I think they are both enjoying themselves. It’s nice to have someone to talk to who shares your interests.

And me? Well…Don’t tell Henry but Dodger…The Red God…. is helping me to design my next project.

 

© 2018 by G.H. Finn

 

Author’s Note:  “Artful Intelligence” came about partly because I love wordplay and partly through my toying with various philosophical concepts, albeit in a light-hearted way. I enjoyed taking René Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think therefore I am), questioning this (e.g. I think I think) and setting it against the rhythmic refrain found in “The Story of the Engine that Thought It Could”, where the rather onomatopoeic sound of the engine produces the chorus “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can”. It had struck me that because of the cyclic repetition of the phrase, this could just as easily be rendered “can I think, can I think, can I think”. Bringing in the Biblical “I am that I am” (as “the name of God”) seemed a natural progression. The use of a steam engine almost immediately suggested a steampunk setting, and I had a bit of fun punning and paraphrasing lines from Charles Dickens (amongst others) throughout the story. While aiming to keep the tone relatively light and comic, I wanted to include some social elements that were important in educated Victorian society (e.g. science versus theology, discussions of religion versus materialism, the expected role of women in society, a concept of social classes, etiquette and “polite” behaviour etc) which I think are themes that are often not explored sufficiently by many steampunk authors.

 

G. H. Finn is the pen-name of someone you are very unlikely to have heard of but who keeps his real identity secret anyway, possibly in the forlorn hope of being mistaken for a superhero. He is of mixed European & Native American (Cherokee-Choctaw) ancestry and for many years lived on one of the remote Isles of Orkney, off the Northern tip of the Scottish mainland. G. H. Finn has been an amateur strongman, a breeder of rare & endangered birds, a professional martial-arts instructor, a teacher of Northern European mythology, a bodyguard, a deep-sea diver, a computer programmer, a performance poet, a coach to world-record-breaking athletes, a singer in a punk band, a massage therapist, a champion needleworker, an international currency smuggler, a consulting sorcerer and an elephant keeper. Three of these are total lies, the others are all true, but you’ll have to guess for yourself which is which.

 

 

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DP FICTION #36A: “9 Things the Mainstream Media Got Wrong About the Ansaj Incident” by Willem Myra

1. Jeter and Amir were neither thugs nor terrorists. They were dumb kids, plain and simple. They meant no harm to anybody, human or alien. They were armed with blatantly obvious toy guns and throughout the whole ordeal they used PG language.

2. They weren’t turned into ash. Weren’t deleted from existence with the pull of a trigger. There was no disintegration ray involved. The alien guarding the main gate used vasoconstrictor-based pistols. That’s how Jeter and Amir died, from internal bleeding. The medical report that wasn’t shown on TV confirmed it.

3. Many have speculated about why they tried to trespass on the Ansaj military base. To the three main theories I say: no, no, and no. They were not spies (Jeter and Amir? Two twenty-something nerds who couldn’t even jump over a fence? Please!). They were not thieves. They were not on drugs. They were, however, like most of us, in search of money and fame.

4. Right before dying, they didn’t shout, “Allahu Akbar!” or, “Go back to your home, alien scum!” like many make-believe eyewitnesses have reported. What Jeter and Amir really said was, “Where’s the kaboom?” They were quoting Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes (heck, they were even cosplaying as him) in what was supposed to be the title of the video: WHERE IS THE KABOOM? [PRANKS OUT OF THIS WORLD].

5. Jeter wanted to become an actor, having never experienced the grimier sides of LA. Amir was to start college in autumn, convinced by his parents that this was the best he could do with and about his future. The two of them first met not on Craigslist, like one CNN article clams, but through a workshop on successful public speaking.

6. They were wannabe YouTubers. Unable to find an audience on their own, they had accepted to work for a 1-million subcribers prankster channel in exchange for exposure and two hundred bucks each per video. For their debut video they were to shoot aliens with Nerf guns, shout quotes that might appeal to 90’s kids, and try their best to get a reaction out of the aliens. Little did they know the aliens couldn’t recognize a fake weapon from a real one.

7. Once they stopped panicking, the aliens did their best to resuscitate Jeter and Amir. They even called the county sheriff’s men, but it was too late by then. I know: I was one of the three guys filming the “prank” from a safe distance.

8. One thing the mainstream media actually got right: the aliens are not at fault here. But neither are Jeter and Amir. Yes, they did something reckless expecting no lasting consequences from it. But they were pushed, manipulated, brainwashed even. The only one truly at fault here is Mitchell Joysel, founder of the PrankedYaHard YouTube channel. He convinced them what they were doing was legal and socially acceptable. That they would get a shitload of views out of it. “If you have any second thoughts,” he told them, “think about this. You could be the first humans to prank an alien—ever! You do this, you’re gonna be mentioned in history textbooks for centuries to come.” Jeter and Amir—their only sin was stupidity. The greedy, boorish prick here is none but Mitchell Joysel.

9. The Feds got a hold of the CCTV footage showing Jeter and Amir’s attempt at a prank and subsequent death. Not on our footage, though. I still have my perspective and so does, unfortunately, Mitchell (he bought the recordings from the other two cameramen; I didn’t want to sell mine, didn’t seem right to put a price on someone’s death). He is going to release a video this weekend, has it scheduled already from what I’ve been told. He’s going to preface it saying the Feds had threatened him with a lawsuit or some BS, but that he felt morally obliged to share it with the world, to show the people the truth. Don’t believe him, guys. It’s all a ruse. He doesn’t care about Jeter or Amir or any of you. All Mitchell cares about is making easy money. Which brings me to us. I am posting this video to ask you guys to: not watch whatever Mitchell’s going to release, to dislike it to hell, and to flag it for violent or repulsive content. Please, guys. I get it, Jeter and Amir shouldn’t have done what they did, and maybe they deserved to die. However, that doesn’t mean that some thirty-something douchebag comfortably sitting in his LA flat should benefit from all the spilled blood. Do you really think that sounds right? I don’t. People say the YouTube community is heartless, immature, and toxic. The worst online community out there—or at least one of the worst after 4chan’s. I’ve been on YouTube for a couple years now and I know you guys are capable of nice things. So what do you say we prove them all wrong? Let’s come together once more and stop Mitchell Joysel from monetizing this tragedy. Alright? Thank you, guys.

© 2018 by Willem Myra

 

headshot-willem-myraWM is the author of a surreal fiction chapbook, Kennel-born, out from Thirty West in the summer of 2018. His work has popped out here and there in Litro, Geometry, AntipodeanSF, and elsewhere. Drop him a line @WillemMyra

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DP FICTION #35B: “Brooklyn Fantasia” by Marcy Arlin

Griffin was an undocumented immigrant griffin from Cardiff, Wales.  He lived with Bringer of Dreams, a semi-materialized entity from Albuquerque, and Fossil Leaf, an animate rock, on the first floor of a run-down salt box row house in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn.

Griffin had golden fur and an emerald beak and was extremely vain about his fingernails. Rumor had it that he had known Richard the Lion-Hearted, but since he had started the rumor, no one believed him.

Bringer of Dreams had run away from New Mexico after a minor scandal with a coyote. He usually wore a large blue, black and red mask and green tunic. He was seven feet tall with large red feet. Bringer wanted to wear skulls on his belt, but his roommates discouraged this, citing health statutes in New York City.

Fossil Leaf was flat and grey, and had once been a Zamia furfuracea cycad. He had escaped being chomped by a dinosaur, way back when, but was undone by volcanic ash. Last year construction workers at the condo site next door had tossed him on to the stoop of the row house.

The neighborhood was cheap, as yet ungentrified, and only five blocks from the semi-regular G train. There was a slummy Key Food supermarket for shopping. The housing projects on the other side of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway were a short flight away.

This September, like every last Sunday of the month, the landlord came by to collect the next month’s rent, which they left in the mailbox outside the front door. But instead of just taking the money (a cashier’s check) and leaving a receipt as usual, he banged on the door.

No one answered. He kept banging. Finally Griffin got pissed at all the noise while he was trying to take a nap. He flung the door open. Bringer of Dreams and Fossil Leaf stood out of sight, listening.

“What!?” Griffin roared.

The landlord, being a Brooklyn slumlord, was unfazed by the appearance of a large roaring golden creature. He had seen worse.

“You gotta move, you and your buddies. I sold the building last week and the new owners are going to tear this shithole down. The bulldozers are arriving on Friday.”

“We got a lease,” Griffin informed him. “Till January.”

“Sorry. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I got one and a half mil for this place, and your lousy $850 does not compare. If you don’t leave I call the City Marshall.”

“What about the next month’s rent we just gave you?” inquired Griffin, perhaps too politely.

The landlord shoved an eviction notice at Griffin and turned to go. Huge mistake.

Griffin ate him, rent, fanny pack and all. Then he closed the door, leaving a slight red patch on the stoop.

Bringer of Dreams sighed. Fossil Leaf said nothing. He had been homeless before.

An hour later, as they sat in the living room, trying to figure out their next step, Griffin regurgitated the landlord’s bones on the kitchen linoleum. Bringer of Dreams got up from the sofa and spirit-melded them together into a jangly skeleton and hung them from the front door.

Still, it was dinnertime and discussion about living arrangements could wait. As usual, no one had gone shopping, so they decided to order a pizza from Domino’s. Nick’s Pizzeria wouldn’t deliver to them anymore since Griffin had eaten the delivery guy.

Fossil wanted broccoli on the pizza. Bringer wanted black beans and corn, which Fossil Leaf said was stupid. Bringer got insulted and tossed Fossil Leaf against the wall. Fossil cursed at Bringer and tried to smash his feet. Griffin told them both to shut up or he would claw them to pieces, which shut Bringer up. Fossil Leaf kept yammering on about what is and what is not a vegetable.

They decided to go halvesies.

Griffin hated pizza. He opened the front door, smiled at the skeleton and flew up to the roof to catch the sunset. He licked his fur and feathers until the oils reached their tips to absorb some Vitamin D. He had to think about the move.

Bringer made the call to Domino’s. The pizza came after half an hour. Bringer put the pie on the living room floor. Fossil Leaf flipped into the box and smooshed himself in the cheese. Bringer removed his mask and gobbled down his half.

When the sun set, Griffin cat-padded down from the roof, using the rickety stairs in the hallway to the apartment. He was disgusted to see a cheesy tomatoey Fossil Leaf crashed on the sofa watching The Amazing Race.

Bringer of Dreams was getting dressed for a night prowl through the dreams of some unlucky souls in the projects. He changed into his headdress, his Ricky’s Novelties acrylic fox tail and his hand-made blue and green synthetic deerskins. If he wore the real stuff, people would come up to him and yell about animal cruelty.

“You are resplendent,” said Griffin. Bringer appreciated the compliment. He worked on his appearance.

“We’re leaving,” Griffin shouted to Fossil Leaf, who was on the couch channel-surfing and muttering about there being nothing on TV anymore. Griffin needed to stretch his wings and case the neighborhood looking for a suitable place.

“Don’t forget to clean the cheese off the furniture,” Griffin yelled. “It’s disgusting in here.”

“Screw you,” said Fossil Leaf, settling on a Law and Order rerun.

“See you later, brother. Got some heads to haunt,” said Bringer of Dreams cheerily, and sauntered off under the BQE down to Sands Street, adornments jangling.

As Griffin flew over New York City, snatching rodents, he pondered their situation. This apartment they had found by pure accident. He had run into Bringer, who was also looking for a place, while roaming the roofs of downtown Manhattan. Bringer thought a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge might be fun. At the exit ramp Griffin had flown off and landed on the roof of their current house. No one lived there. They moved in and one day the landlord showed up and said they had to pay up or be evicted. That was three years ago.

Now, Bringer of Dreams materialized in Apartment 8D in the projects. A young nurse who worked at Methodist Hospital slept deeply, exhausted from a 12-hour shift. Her walls were hung with colorful tapestries and pictures of her family back home in Grenada. Bringer sang her a song about oceans and pelicans. She woke up sweating and in tears. She thought about quitting her job at the hospital to go home and take care of her mother.

At sunrise, the two night-stalkers returned to the apartment. The TV was smashed to smithereens. Fossil Leaf was lying on the sill in the kitchen next to the geraniums, basking in the southern exposure sunlight. He sobbed softly. He wailed about missing photosynthesis.

“Get over it,” said Bringer. “We’re talking 65 millions years, give or take. Want some breakfast?” He went to the kitchen and opened a package of instant oatmeal.

Griffin was exhausted. He plopped on the raggedy brown carpet in the living room, avoiding the greasy pizza box, and started to clean himself. He was sick of Fossil’s kvetching. Maybe they should just split up.

Bringer had gone into the bathroom to have a shave. He called to Fossil Leaf.

“You really should get out more, my friend. Maybe the park? Go dancing?”

“Oh fuck off, will you,” muttered Fossil Leaf. “What do you know about my life? You are barely corporeal.”

“My, my. Corporeal. Aren’t we fancy,” said Bringer. He finished shaving.

“Shut up, both of you.” Griffin squawked loudly. He put his hind leg down and sighed. “Tomorrow we got to find a place. Now I need to sleep.”

He went back up to the roof for a catnap. He curled his long sleek tail around his beak. Bringer of Dreams went to his room, removed his clothes and curled up under the light blue IKEA comforter. Fossil Leaf fell into a bowl of Lucky Charms and was soon snoring.

On Tuesday, Griffin took Fossil Leaf with him to look at a place in Park Slope that was advertised on Craig’s List. Not surprisingly, what was advertised as a two-bedroom turned out to be a refurbished boiler room with two particleboard closets.

“$2,275 for this crap!” exclaimed Griffin, and promptly ate the real estate broker.

“She said she had a place near the BQE. You could’ve waited to chow down,” said Fossil Leaf.

“I hate being lied to,” replied Griffin. “Anyway, too much pollution with all that truck traffic.”

On Wednesday, Bringer told them that he had seen a “For Rent” sign in front of a six-story apartment building in Clinton Hill, a hop, skip, and a jump from Vinegar Hill. It was a co-op whose owners lived in Dubai.

They checked it out. Bringer tried hard to look human and pretty much convinced the owner that he was a trans-species performance artist with a trust fund. The only issue was that all the renters had to be approved by the Board.

“What the hell is a credit rating?” said Fossil Rock.

“Whatever it is, I am sure we don’t have it,” said Griffin. “Too bad. Sounds like a great place, parquet floors, dishwasher, doorman.” He clacked his beak hungrily.

“Would you please stop thinking about dinner for a change?” said Bringer of Dreams. “We’re going to be bulldozed in two days.”

Griffin had a friend in Prospect Park, a golem who had been left there by a rabbi from Crown Heights. Maybe it knew of a place. Never hurt to ask. Two bedrooms and one bath. Fossil Leaf usually slept on a sofa. He had to admit he’d miss the guys if they split up.

That evening, Griffin jumped onto the top of the B69 to Prospect Park.

He got off at Grand Army Plaza and loped to the northeast side of the park. He caught and ate a bunny and a squirrel.

Golem knew of only one place, way the hell out in Sheepshead Bay, by the water. Some abandoned fish restaurant. Golem claimed the area was unlikely to gentrify any time soon, given that it was at least 90 minutes from the Financial District. There were plenty of fish. And fishermen.

Thursday night they trekked out to Sheepshead Bay to look at the ex-fish restaurant. There was a full moon. The fish were awake, snipping at bugs on the water’s surface. Small fishing boats moored at the docks gently rose and fell, giving off a sweet flounder smell. Their white sides glowed and guided the trio to the abandoned building not far from the wharves. Across the inlet a few lights could be seen from the homes of the Manhattan Beach families, waiting anxiously for the next hurricane.

It was quite peaceful.

The building was a dull weathered red, with once-white doors and window frames. Inside were cobwebs, mice, rats, mold, and rotting dampness. A sign hung off the roof that said “Sal’s Fried Fish. All you can eat-$5.96.

“That’ll be the day,” said Bringer. “You can’t get a latte for under $7.00 in Brooklyn anymore.

“I hate it,” complained Fossil Leaf. “You can hear the dead. Not to mention wildlife.”

“Would you two please stop?” Griffin was really tired. He now owed Golem a favor for finding this place for them, and you didn’t owe favors lightly to golems.

“According to the golem, some dead geezer owns the place and will let us live here, no questions asked, for five hundred a month. There’s a toilet in the back, and a phone line. I checked and there are plenty of Italian places around, so you two will be well supplied with pizza. What do you say?”

“I still hate it,” said Fossil Leaf. “Too much water.”

“You don’t go anywhere, so why do you care?” said Bringer of Dreams. He sniffed the salty air. “I mean, a person could come up with some really nice dreams here. All watery and drowny. Tangled up in nets. Getting lost in a storm. I like it.”

“I guess it’s okay,” mumbled Fossil Leaf.

The place put Bringer in a good mood. He had grown up in high desert, and the ocean breeze was a refreshing change.

Griffin flew them back to Vinegar Hill and gathered up their few possessions. They went down to DeKalb and got the D train out to Sheepshead Bay. It was 4 AM and no one on the train noticed them, or if they did, they didn’t care. Or if they cared, they pretended they didn’t. New York subways, for goodness sakes. Everyone rides it.

It took them a couple of hours to settle in. Friday morning the rising sun streamed in the front window of their new place. Fossil Leaf, in spite of himself, went to bask on the ledge in a planter that held the dead shriveled leaves of a rubber plant. It still had some dirt; he dug himself a comfy little depression.

Bringer found an upstairs room where the former owners used to take their mistresses. It still held a large gilded mirror and a cedar closet.

Griffin found a balcony that faced the inlet. The wind ruffled his neck feathers. He stretched his claws, flexed his tail, and lay down with a large sigh.

All the mice and rats left rapidly.

He thought, you know, sometimes if you have to move, you can actually find a nicer place. He closed his eyes, contented.

© 2018 by Marcy Arlin

 

Author’s Note: BROOKLYN FANTASIA began as a writing prompt by Betsy James in one of her amazing online workshops. She suggested we look at an altar we have, or one created by one of the other participants. Fellow SF writer Kathy Kitts uploaded a photo of hers that included, um, a miniature griffin, a Hopi katchina doll, and a fossil leaf.  Now what would those three creatures do together? My husband and I had just moved into a new place in Brooklyn. The four months of hellish apartment hunting came to mind. Hence, the story.

 

Marcy Arlin member of Brooklyn SF Writers group (BSFW) at The Brooklyn Commons 06/16/16Marcy studied at the Gunn Center with Chris McKitterick, Andy Duncan, & Kij Johnson, and with Betsy James. She is a fellow at the Writer’s Institute (NYC) and is a Fulbright scholar to the Czech Republic and Romania. Marcy is Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Immigrants’ Theatre and has taught theatre at CUNY, Yale, Brown, University of Chicago (her alma mater), Pace. Marcy’s theatre work with immigrants, interculturalism and social justice is a strong influence on her spec fiction. Publications: Daily Science Fiction, perihelionsf.com, Kaleidocast 1 & 2, Broad Universe Sampler, Man.In.Fest. Experimental Theatre Journal. She is a producer/host for the BSFW podcast and is editor of Czech Plays: 7 New Works, Immigrant Artist Interviews (tcgcircle.org),Eastern European Playwrights: Women Write the New (SEEP Journal). In the works is a science fiction murder mystery. Marcy  is a member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and Theatre Without Borders and lives in Brooklyn with a ghost and two cats. (bio photo by Melissa C. Beckman)

 

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DP FICTION #35A: “Six Hundred Universes of Jenny Zars” by Wendy Nikel

Sometimes I forget which universe I’m in.

It happens most often on days like today. I’ve spent the last twelve hours in the makeshift lab I threw together in the basement of the University, tucked away in some long-forgotten storage closet where the boxes of toilet paper are so old that the brands that produced them don’t exist anymore.

All I want to do now is go home, nuke myself one of those Salisbury steak meals that always burns my tongue, boil a pot of tea, and curl up with a good book. Something fluffy and filled with the kind of one-liners that transcend dimensions, jokes that I can laugh at without worrying whether they have a deeper meaning somewhere else or what my shrink would say.

I ride my bicycle home. It’s the safest mode of transportation when I’m dimension-jumping, and it’s all I’m allowed here. I’ve tried to drive cars in parallel universes, just because no one stops me, but they’re tricky. Even in this dimension, cars have each got their quirks, but elsewhere, those little differences can be deadly. In #497, people drive on the wrong side of the road. In #287 and #381, the gas pedal’s on the opposite side. In #088, they’re all equipped with self-eject buttons, labeled with the same symbol that’s used for in-seat heaters in our universe. Good thing I checked the manual that day.

When I get to my apartment and the key doesn’t fit, I realize I’ve done it again.

Somehow, I’m in the wrong universe.

I duck into the row of rhododendron that run along the edge of the apartment building (they’re magnolias in my universe) and try to sort out my thoughts, figure out where I went wrong. I didn’t see anyone else as I was leaving the lab, but considering it’s a Saturday (unless I’m in universe #185, in which case it’s Bananaday, I kid you not), that didn’t automatically tip me off. The apartment building is the same, beat-up, ugly, low-income housing unit as in my universe, the only place that would let me rent with my record.

I must have overshot my return trip, but to what degree? Am I in universe #549, that uses social media “likes” as currency and that tried to legally elect a toad as president? Or #599, where buffalos are kept as pets? From my limited view through the rhododendron blossoms, it’s hard to tell, though the lack of buffalo droppings on the sidewalk makes me think it’s probably not the latter.

I take a deep breath. I’ll be okay. Just as long as it’s not #600, where all food has been replaced by Ranch Bee’s All-Natural Protein Bars… those things are revolting, and it’s getting dangerously close to dinnertime. I’d rather starve than choke down another one of those.

The dimension-hopping device and my notes are still in the lab across campus, so — despite my stomach’s grumblings — I have to head there first to sort this out. And I have to do so without running into my other self.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I hate myself. As if my own consciousness and what I’d done weren’t bad enough, then there’s all of the alternate ‘me’s whom I have to work around. As far as I know, I’m the only one that’s figured out how to hop from one dimension to the next, and who knows what the other ‘me’s would do if they met me on the street. For some reason, we’re all stuck here in this same pretentious university town with its same pretentious street names (Liberty Row? Freedom Lane? Albert Einstein Avenue?). Me, I can’t help it that I’m stuck here; I’m not allowed to cross state lines. But all the other ‘me’s have somehow gravitated here by some twisted cosmic joke. Probably just to thwart me.

Think, Jenny, think.

It’d help if I knew what universe this was. Then I’d know where the other ‘me’ might be and which of the people and places in this town to avoid. But unless I see a buffalo tromp down the sidewalk on a leash in the next few seconds, hiding in the bushes isn’t going to help.

I step out onto the sidewalk, mount my bike, and enact plan A: ride as fast as I can back to campus, grab the device, and get out of here as fast as humanly possible before I really screw things up.

I’ve just turned onto Madame Curie Memorial Drive when a pickup with 22-inch rims barrels through the intersection, cutting me off and nearly turning me into squashed buffalo dung on the asphalt. I swerve and somehow avert disaster, but the whole time my head is spinning because I’d know that Hulk-green pickup anywhere, in any universe. And here it is, all in one piece, with its fender intact and an uncracked windshield. Which means this is one of the universes where I didn’t take it on an adrenaline-fueled joyride and crash it through Mr. Wilson’s fence, killing his prize dairy cow Buttercup.

“Hey, Jenny! Want a ride?” The voice somehow rises over the engine’s din.

I avoid eye contact and wave a hand in the universal gesture for “go away” (at least I hope it’s universal, that it doesn’t mean something embarrassing here), but I can still feel the truck rumbling behind me. Why can’t he just leave me alone?

Some people believe in soul mates, the one person whom you’re destined love. If such a thing transcends alternate universes, then Lex Fischer is my soul hate, the one person who’s destined to be my downfall.

“C’mon, J-Zars,” he calls, using a nickname he knows I hate (then again, maybe the alternate Jenny here doesn’t mind it). “It’s been almost two years since Dougie’s party. You have to forgive me sometime.”

My feet drop from the bike pedals, stopping me dead on the sidewalk.

So there was a party in this universe.

Seeing the truck in one piece, I’d assumed that none of that night’s events had happened here. But obviously the divergence between my timeline and this one was sometime after the fact. Here was my chance to find out how things might have turned out differently.

I shouldn’t… but my curiosity wins out.

Lex has got the door of his truck swung open for me, but I don’t trust him in this universe any more than I would in any other, so I just stand on the sidewalk and shout to him. “Forgive you for what?”

“For…? C’mon, Jenny,” he pleads. “You know what I mean.”

I hold my ground, though I know what I really should be doing is ducking out of sight, running away, and getting back to my own messed-up version of the universe.

“You know… for slipping the vodka in your drink. It was a joke.”

It was a joke. That’s what he’d said that night back in my universe, right before I screamed something intelligible at him, grabbed his keys, and raced off to his truck. Not my brightest idea, but hey, I don’t handle alcohol well. Unfortunately, since Lex’s dad is friends with the DA, that one bad idea and the involuntary cowslaughter that followed led to six months of jail time, a big, ugly mark on my permanent record, and a parole officer from whom the only escape is darting in and out of parallel universes.

In short, that joke ruined my life.

“Come on,” he pleads. “Can’t you let it go? I called you a cab like you asked! It’s not like anyone got hurt!”

Huh. So that’s how it happened here. Now that I have the information I wanted, I turn and pedal across the grass before I can do something that the ‘me’ here might regret. I duck between two of the University’s buildings at the first opportunity. When I finally reach the building where my makeshift lab is located, not only is the outside door propped open, but the one to the storage area is ajar as well. I throw my bike to the ground, hoping that this universe’s ‘me’ wasn’t too inconvenienced by its disappearance, and press myself against the wall to listen.

No doubt about it, someone’s shuffling around downstairs in the storage area, right where I’ve left the teleport device and my notebook. I promise myself that if I get out of this, I’m going to be more careful about where I keep it. Impatient, I inch toward the door and nudge it open further so I can peer in. After running into Lex, my nerves are rattled, and I need to get out of here now. This day couldn’t possibly get worse.

Except it does.

The body that’s kneeling beside my green backpack is all too familiar. So are the hands flipping through my spiral notebook and the eyes staring at the teleportation device. I chomp down on my thumb to keep myself from screaming at the other ‘me’ to back away and leave my stuff alone. I should’ve known that another ‘me’ would be the one to seek the solitude of this abandoned storage room; that’s totally something I would do.

Her eyes are wide in surprise as she reads the notes written in her own handwriting. Her hand is on the device, now on the dial, now on the button. The button that would shift her from this dimension to another.

I have to say something. My hand is on the door, ready to push it open. I have to stop her before she leaves with my only means to get back home.

Or do I?

If she’s anything like me (which how could she not be?), she’s not going to take no for an answer. She’s not going to sit by and simply watch me go on my way. No, she’s going to want in on this, too. She’d see it as an adventure. So why not let her?

This is what I’ve been searching for all along, isn’t it — an escape from the wrong turns of my past, a universe where Lex Fischer hasn’t ruined my life? And all I have to do is let her disappear from it, and it’ll be mine for the taking.

It’s now or never. Once she’s gone, the device is gone with her, along with it the notebook that contains my last two years’ worth of work. It’d take me months to reconstruct the plans for another device, and even longer to figure out where ‘home’ is from here without my notes on the six-hundred different universes I’ve explored so far. But why would I ever want to go back there, to that universe where I was imprisoned by my past?

I take my hand off the door and step back. A noise like “zolt” fills the air, and I know even without looking that she’s gone. I’ve done it. I’ve stolen my life back.

I duck into the room and grab the purse she left behind. I gleefully rummage through her (my!) class schedule, car keys, and the keys to the off-campus housing that — from the address on the tag — is probably a million times nicer than the place where I’d been living.

I fly up the steps and nearly trip over my bike. Never mind that old thing. I have a valid driver’s license again. At the parking lot, I jam my thumb down on the unlock button, watching for the flashing lights that will indicate which car is mine. A newish convertible winks its headlights at me.

“And this is where the heroine rides off into the sunset,” I mutter to myself as I slide into the driver’s seat. My stomach grumbles a protest. “Fine, fine. First a drive-thru.”

I pull into the drive-thru and nearly ram my brand-new convertible into the car in front of me in shock.

In place of the menu, there’s a giant advertisement for Ranch Bee’s All-Natural Protein Bars, the only food sold here or anywhere else.

© 2018 by Wendy Nikel

 

bw-gp-treeWendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and elsewhere. Her time travel novella, The Continuum, will be available from World Weaver Press on January 23. For more info, visit wendynikel.com

 

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DP FICTION #34B: “The Leviathans Have Fled the Sea” by Jon Lasser

Aye, Lass, I recall the first I saw a mermaid. I was young then, and captain of a whaler — Captain Elizabeth Jackson has a nice ring to it, I always thought. You’d never guess to look at this old lady that I was a whaler once, would you? Bring me a cup o’ the bumbo and I’ll tell you all about the siren: her flashing metal fluke, the cold fishy gleam in her eyes.

Thank you for the bumbo. That’s the stuff! Show me what you brought?

Aye, she was one of mine: the scales overlap just so, like I took them yesterday off the lathe. More than a hundred scales for each tail. No wonder my hands ache so. It’s not just age but the work, too.

And where was I? Oh yes: I was captain of my own airship in those days, the Sea Eagle. Two hundred fifty tons displacement, teak decking, a balloon the like of which you’d never seen. We’d fly from the Sandwich Isles to Russian America in two days with all three propellers spinning on their out-decks. Just to talk of it, it’s like as I can smell the coal burning in the sweet sea air.

Half the whaling fleet had taken to the air after the disaster of ’54, sea-ships jammed up in that Russian ice. They’d gone too far and stayed too long hunting their prey. We should have taken the disaster as we would have a light-blimp warning us away from a mist-shrouded peak, but instead we steered toward that siren’s song.

That was my first year as captain; I was thirty-four, still bright-eyed and hungry to make my fortune. We flew over the Arctic Sea twice, lowering our ladders and dropping food and blankets for the boys we couldn’t fit on deck. Cost a pretty penny, and nearly half those boys made it home alive.

Yes, most sea-sailors were men. You’d be too young to remember. But up in the sky, we didn’t give a pound of sand how your tenders sat. Wasn’t as many men eager to take in that sea air after ’54, nor were lasses so heavy as the men. On a sea-ship, displacement doesn’t matter as much as when you’re balancing against the balloon.

We had a handful of gals with keen eyes who could spot leviathans from one hundred fathoms in the air, and we gave chase. Leastways, we did in the early years. By ’60, we could spend days combing the sea looking for a whale with nary to show for it.

We’d taken them all, you see? Maybe if we’d stuck to sea-ships we couldn’t have found them all, the way we did with air-ships. The Right Whale, the Humpback–all gone.

‘Twas a rain-dappled eve in ’62 when we flew into San Francisco, nothing to show for our voyage but a lot of debt to the colliers, and most of the crew was sleeping aboard ship.

I was pretty skint myself, but stood everyone to some vittles and a round of drinks at The Yellow Dog. Twenty diners digging a deeper hole in my pocket, but if there were whales or anything else worth a penny beneath that briny blue, I’d need a crew.

Everyone ate in silence, and drank their ale. You’ve never seen glummer sailors than these gals. It was Doctor Cross who broached the issue, after I’d ordered a second round.

“Cap’n, the leviathans have fled the sea.” She was the eldest of the crew, and revered by them. Skin the color of coal, she spoke with an island lilt I couldn’t guess and she wouldn’t volunteer. I’d heard tell she’d served on sea-ships in her youth, dressed as a man. “Can you feed us every night, or should we find new ships to sail?”

Rocky stood. She was tall, too tall for a sailor, but had a steady hand and a fearful eye with the harpoon.

“Ya old bat.” Rocky made an obscene gesture at Dr. Cross, but fondly. “It ain’t the leviathans have fled the sea. They’re out there, if we can find them.”

That was what I loved about Rocky, and why she was the whole crew’s favorite: her skull was as thick as a humpback’s, and she’d thrash for days at the end of a harpoon if that’s what it took. Still, I bristled at her calling Dr. Cross old—I was hardly older than our doctor. Rocky was wrong about the whales, but the crew had to decide, not I.

“They’re gone,” Doctor Cross said. One sensible voice.

“You think we fished ’em all out?” Catalina, my first mate. “Could be,” she allowed, “But what’ll we do?”

“Fish something else.” A sly smile crept across the Doctor’s face.

“Nothing pays like whales,” said Rocky. “That’s why we hunt ’em.”

“Mermaids.” The Doctor looked around the table. “Mermaids would fetch a good price.”

“Less work than cutting whales,” Rocky mused.

“No such thing as mermaids!” Catalina laughed.

“I talked with a sailor who saw one off Lahaina just a week ago,” said Doctor Cross. “Perhaps there are more.”

“Wouldn’t make sense to be just one.” Catalina nodded. She ordered another round on my account, and it was agreed. Half the gals didn’t credit the doctor’s tale, but most of those were like the coal engines. I filled their bellies and their hearts, and they followed me as high as the gas-bags could lift us. We were sisters of the sea, and I the eldest.

***

‘Twas off Lahaina, as Doctor Cross had heard, that I saw the sea-siren. Rocky spotted her from the crow’s nest.

“Ahoy,” she called, “That’s a siren off our port bow.”

I spotted her in my spyglass: a spark of light off her tail. She was wiry like an eel, all muscle over tiny bones. Her arms looked like they’d snap off in a current.

Between her waist and hips she looked sickly, a greyish pallor with a sort of sharkskin look, rough and unhealthy. But below that, a huge muscular tail flashed in the sunlight like a fish, green as a copper church-steeple.

When she saw that she’d been spotted, she opened her mouth to sing, but let out only a croak.

Now, we’d not much experience capturing a live animal what would fight back. Whales, we usually bomb-lanced them, blew a hole in the back of their heads. But it went easy, this part: we lowered the crane, which dragged the fishing skein in the water behind us.

“Full speed,” I shouted, and the coal-girls fed the bellies of their engines. The propellers moaned furiously as the steam-whistles blew. The net closed around the mermaid, who flopped angrily as we raised the crane, lifting her on deck.

The siren flopped about, tangled in the net, unable to stand. The crew tugged at the skein, finding the edges and spreading them apart, while the mermaid twisted and screamed.

I’d heard tell that sirens sang sweetly, but this one yowled like a cat who’d wagered her tail in a game of dice. Mayhap their yowling was why that old salt Odysseus had cause to plug his ears.

The screaming did let me know that she could breathe air just fine. I’d half expected her to gasp her gills like a fish, but she wasn’t a fish any more than I was, or the whales had been.

Rocky stepped onto the net and unthreaded the mermaid’s arms from the holes they’d worked into it.

“It’s all right.” Rocky patted the mermaid along her scales, as though she was petting a dog. “Captain, she’s—”

The mermaid’s face twisted from fear to rage quicker than I could follow. She lunged at Rocky and tore her throat out with her teeth, sharp as a great white shark.

I still wonder how Rocky suffered, but right then I couldn’t see a thing: the crew descended as one upon the siren, all but the coal-girls on the out-decks, Doctor Cross, and myself.

“Stop,” I shouted, but too quiet for them to hear me above the mermaid’s final wail. They tore her apart for Rocky, and I didn’t see as I could stop them if I wanted to.

They fed her top half to the sharks, chumming the water with her arms and hunks of her body. But her bottom half—that stayed on deck. Sharks don’t eat brass plate, no matter how corroded by the sea it might be.

I knelt. My knees smashed the deck and I cried out, not from the pain but for Rocky—and for the siren, and for my crew.

‘Twixt the bends and bevels of her fluke plates, their fittings and bolts scattered about, I saw a smaller plate with straight sides and sharp corners: a plaque the size of a calling card, an address engraved upon it. I tucked it away in my vest pocket.

***

I spent that night in a Lahaina boarding house, where I listened to the sailor next door. Her ship had hauled up something, it seemed, for she’d gotten drunk on rum and taken a couple of dock-walking boys up to her room. Boys like that, they would have taken to sea once. Now they thought it woman’s work, and instead they ennobled themselves, strolling the wharves and selling their bodies to sailors.

I told myself the pleasure-wailing that carried through my room’s cheap walls was why I couldn’t sleep. Truth told, it reminded me of that terrible siren’s last moments. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the fear and the rage from her eyes, like she was accusing me of something, and so I lay in bed turning that brass plaque over and over in my hand.

It seemed to me that a man or woman who’d leave a calling card like that would have good reason to be found. ‘Twas a pretty bronze tail, doubtless, but unworthy of such vanity.

Perhaps most of these plaques never found their way into sailors’ hands: tossed overboard and nestled among the oyster shells and empty bottles of some octopus’s garden, or unseen among a tail sold for scrap by a hungry whaler’s crew. Mayhap only diggers and worriers such as I would pocket them, or mayhap only we were foolish enough to have hunted a mermaid.

I still hadn’t shut my eyes by the hour dawn’s pale pink tentacles reached between the shutter slats, and I saw the world through a sleepless haze as thick as our engines’ coal smoke. My heart swayed like the Sea Eagle in a heavy storm, and the plaque felt like a message sung for my ears alone.

***

I’d called for the crew to be aboard ship by the very crack of noon, and they’d come. I kept looking for Rocky among them, but we’d sent her on home to her mother in Canton, Ohio. She’d talked about the green trees and hot summers of her childhood, and I hoped her soul would find peace there.

“You should say a few words,” Catalina said. She scratched an itch on her arm, right next to the tattoo of a whaler’s sandbag she’d had since she’d first taken to the air. “They miss her. They need to know where we’ll sail next.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I croaked like our siren, for I had no answers to give, and nothing but a wordless ache for Rocky. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps my sleepless night lent me an ill humor. It ached behind my eyeballs like a bomb-lance, or a cannonball full of rum.

“Go on,” Catalina urged. “They need to hear from you.”

“Yesterday, we said goodbye to Rocky, and–” My voice cracked again. Doctor Cross put her hand on my shoulder. She aimed to reassure me, I didn’t doubt, but I slapped it away like her fingers were horseflies.

“I don’t know where the waters have taken the leviathans, nor what in the briny blue will fill our bellies and our pockets like they have. But we must set sail.”

“The mermaids,” someone shouted. “Let’s avenge Rocky!”

A cheer went through the crew, but I shuddered to hear it. Dr. Cross looked at me and shrugged. Catalina cheered with the rest of them, and I knew I’d lost my command.

***

I telegraphed the investors and left The Sea Eagle with Catalina in Lahaina without waiting for their reply. They would hire Catalina, or a new captain, or the crew would go pirate and elect one of their own. I didn’t care which as I rode a balloon to the Big Island, to Hilo.

The address on the plaque belonged to a workshop in an alley set back some ways from the wharf.

I heard the drizzle tap-tap-tap against the shack’s tin roof, the rustle of the grass curtain in the doorway.

“Hello?” I called. “Anybody in here?”

“Come in,” said a man’s voice. I went inside. He was a white man, the sort who washed up like driftwood from the sea in tropical villages. He looked newly middle-aged, as though time had ambushed him: streaks of grey in his hair and his half-hearted beard. He looked like a sailor but wore the delicate hands of a gentleman inventor. “Can I help you with something?”

I pulled his calling card from my gunny sack and placed it on his workbench. “You made it?”

“They have names, you know.” He wiped his rheumy eyes. “Who was it?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “She had long brown hair, a body like an eel–she wailed a terrible song…”

“Molpe, then. I never could coax her to a sweeter song.” He sniffled. “She was the first who hadn’t asked to be a siren. How did she die?”

“We caught her in our nets. She killed Rocky–”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Madam. You’re captain of a whaler, then?”

“I was, until yesterday afternoon.”

“And when have you last seen a whale?”

I said nothing.

“They’re gone, you see. The Great Chantey of Being has lost another verse. And, if we do not want to be severed forever from the Lord Almighty, we must sing a new one.” He coughed fiercely; he did his best to cover it, but I saw blood in his handkerchief.

“Mermaids?”

“Sirens. To prey on sailors, who have become too strong. To call them down from the sky and repay their thoughtlessness.” The mechanic had a certain rough tenor to his zeal, the certainty of a man who knew he was dying and was looking on to greater things. I could see what he saw, if only I pointed my spyglass just so. “They’ve taken all the whales, but learned nothing. Something else will be next: the sharks, the tuna.” He shook his head.

And what had I done, when I left my ship in Lahaina?

“Elizabeth Jackson,” I said, “Captain of the Sea Eagle. Former captain.”

“Reginald.” The mechanic shook my hand. “Father of sirens.”

***

He died the next spring, on a rainy April morning, having taught me all his clever fingers’ tricks. The shape of his art wasn’t at all like hunting whales. Coaxing life from bronze, brass, and copper started with the end in mind. It was elaborate, obsessive, and tickled my fancy in a way quite different from sailing above the ocean, finding what was already there.

I felt I owed something to the beasts I’d taken from the sea without knowing the ends of my actions: something added to the world, not taken as though God had laid the ocean out for me like a holiday table.

Yes: I took up Reginald’s chisels, his screw-drivers and shears. I bought a lathe, a hammer better suited to my hand, to continue his work. A bone saw and a surgeon’s needle.

Now you come to me, bearing one of my nameplates, and ask what is to be done about the plague of sirens who bubble up from the briny depths.

I have a question for you in return: how many sailors have you to feed my daughters?

© 2017 by Jon Lasser

 

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Jon Lasser lives in Seattle, WA. He is a graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Galaxy’s Edge, DarkFuse, Untethered: A Magic iPhone Anthology, and elsewhere. Find him on the Web at twoideas.org and on Twitter as @disappearinjon.

 

 

 

 

 

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DP FICTION #34A: “Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones

For our one-year anniversary, my boyfriend Kit gives me a knobbly sweater knit in irregular rows of beige, dark beige, and light beige, studded with white yarn blobs shaped like aborted ponies. The left arm—clearly shorter than the right—is tourniqueted midway by red plastic gift ribbon knotted into a bad bow.

Everything but that arm gently undulates of its own volition like jellyfish tentacles, simultaneously guileless and sinister.

“I made this for you, Hakim!” His slightly crooked teeth flash against his black skin like freshwater pearls. “It’s merino wool. Now we can match!” Indeed, Kit is wearing an identical sweater, minus the gift bow. “Go ahead and put it on so I can see how it looks on you.”

Every relationship experiences those crucial moments that make or break you, where you decide whether to commit or bail. This is clearly one of them.

I’ve been smitten with Kit since we met on the dance floor at Boneshaker’s, me in the black suspender tights and feathered fascinator I usually wore for Drag Queen Night, and him in a tacky red-and-blue thrift store sweater that made me think Hipster Independence Day. He bought me a mai-tai with a pink plastic elephant perched on the rim, and I invited him into my booth. Later, I invited him home. Two weeks after that, we moved in together.

That’s when I learned that Kit didn’t just wear those sweaters ironically.

So yes, I’m well aware of Kit’s sweater problem. But this one is undulating.

By now, Kit can read my hesitance in my lack of enthusiastic sweater-wearing. He worries the knit between his fingers, on the verge of tears. “Don’t you like it? It’s hypo-allergenic merino wool. I remember how that scarf I crocheted you for Hanukkah gave you hives all around your neck. This one won’t do anything like that. I promise.”

The sweater’s right arm undulates up Kit’s cheek and brushes away the tears.

“No, Honey, of course it’s not that,” I say. “It’s… well…”

Here’s the thing: Kit is the sensitive sort. Cries at the end of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic season finales, especially the one about the royal gala. I’ve found out the hard way that you can’t just tell him what you’re really thinking, because he tends to take it badly. Better to dial the truth back a few notches. Make it about literally anything else. “I just got back from the gym, and the super-soft absorbent yarn might get all sweaty if I put it on.” The sweater’s arm flagellates my chin three-four-five times. I think it’s trying to strangle me.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. This wool’s naturally anti-bacterial and water-repellent because they don’t strip out all the lanolin. You can wear it in the rain, like a true Scotsman!” During that last bit, he slips into a Sean-Connery-From-The-Highlander voice, because he knows I think it’s sexy when he uses accents.

And you know what? He’s right. I do think it’s sexy. I don’t want to lie to my Kit. So I do the most romantic, stupid thing I could possibly do. I tell him the truth. “Kit, that sweater’s fucking moving. It’s trying to give me a back massage I definitely didn’t consent to. There’s no way I’m going to give it access to my whole body.”

Kit’s mouth opens and closes a couple times. He swallows, that big Adam’s apple bobbing up and down under his soft black skin. His eyes shine huge and teary like when he’s four margaritas in, or when his feelings are hurt, and the feelings-hurter is moi. He’s working so hard not to cry that he can’t squeeze out more than one syllable at a time. “Bu—but it’s our anni—anniversary, and I—I made it—just—for—you…”

And that’s when I realize I love Kit. Like really, seriously, crazily love him, in the let’s grow old on the front porch and yell obscenities at the neighbor’s kids sort of way. He’s worth the endless My Little Pony reruns, and the tacky sweaters (don’t tell him I called them tacky), and even the hyper-sensitivity that creates situations like this at least once a week.

And by Lady Gaga’s meat dress, he’s worth even this tacky homemade Lovecraftian horror. So against my better judgment and sense of self-preservation, I put it on, because that’s True Love.

Kit is so relieved he practically melts into my arms. “It looks so dashing on you, Baby,” he says in his best Sean-Connery-as-James-Bond voice, because most of his fake accents are Connery-related. The hug he gives me makes it all worthwhile, until just like True Love, the sweater’s fibers begin burrowing into my skin.

I ignore the tingling sensation of epidermis melding with hypo-allergenic merino wool, and give Kit the one-year-anniversary kiss he’s been waiting for. “I love you too, Sweetheart.”

He smiles so sweetly at me, and his eyes hood seductively. But when his lips part, he coughs hard, like a cat with a hairball, and something damp and wooly flops behind his teeth. He leans over, coughs and sputters, and with every hacking cough another inch of sweater crawls up out of his throat until with one last retch the whole thing flops wetly at his feet. I look on with horror as the damp thing spreads itself out to dry like a moth from its cocoon, growing larger and fluffier: another hideously tacky sweater, this one bedazzled with Cupids, still damp from his saliva. Kit looks a little embarrassed.

But I’ve already made up my mind. I know what he wants to say. I pick up the Cupid sweater. “How gorgeous. You made this for me, didn’t you?” I pull it on over the first sweater.

“You really mean it? You like them?” He tries to say something else, but he gets all choked up again. After a second hacking fit, another sweater—asphalt gray with orange paisley swirls—crawls out instead. My poor boyfriend wilts a few inches and avoids my eyes.

The new sweater wiggles and flops around my feet, but I don’t hesitate. I’ve made my choice. “I love them.” Then I pick up the paisley one and layer it over the other two.

He’s my Kit, after all, and some sacrifices are totally worth it.

© 2017 by Rachael K. Jones

 

Author’s Note: The so-called “Sweater Curse” is a real superstition among knitters. It states that at some point in a new romantic relationship, a knitter will choose to make their beloved a handmade sweater, and the sweater will destroy the relationship. Interestingly, research finds there may be some truth to it–that for dedicated knitters, making a new romantic partner a handmade sweater often precedes a breakup–although hypotheses vary on why. I personally think it relates to the clash between the TLC that goes into making a handmade gift for the person you love, and the fact that amateur handicrafts can be objectively awful to outside eyes. You see the days and weeks of love you put into the design and knitting, but your beloved just sees a tacky sweater they’re now expected not to just accept, but to wear… in public. If they reject the sweater, they reject you, and the groundwork is laid for the kind of fight that can shatter a relationship. For the sweater-receiver, this is a moment of decision, where you decide whether you can accept the good along with the tacky. As an author who has written stories for particular people before, I can relate to the creative anxiety that underlies the Sweater Curse. Fortunately, my friends are very gracious sorts, and those anxieties have never borne out.

 

headshot-8-28Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael is a World Fantasy Award nominee, Tiptree Award honoree, and winner of Writers of the Future. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and PodCastle. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.

 

 

 

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DP FICTION #33B: “Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur

This is a game. There are rules that must be followed. Isn’t that what you told me when you gave me the gun, when you pointed me at the universe and fired? They are easy:
1. There is a reality where you are the winner. Where you never fear and never want and never lose.
2. The gun destroys realities.

Easy. But I didn’t learn until later, until after you were gone and I was alone, what you meant. Because who would believe it from a man you met at a hotel bar, a tired man with a fading glint in his eye who you still took back to your room despite the crazy shit he was saying? Or maybe I slept with you because of the crazy shit you were saying. Maybe that’s why you gave me the gun, because you saw that I was looking for something in you, something I couldn’t explain until you put that cold length of iron in my hand.

You were smiling when I pulled the trigger. Just for laughs, I told myself, just to make sure it wasn’t real, though the voice in the back of my mind was already asking what if? What if? The most dangerous question in the universe. In any universe. Click.

Like every time now, the first thing I do is close my eyes. It’s what they tell you to do when you’re in a building and the lights go out. Close your eyes. Count to five. Let yourself adjust. The last thing you want to be doing is running around blind in the dark. I count to five. Like always I smell smoke, though the gun never shows any signs of having been fired. It’s like my mind wants there to be some smoking barrel, some proof that something happened.

I open my eyes.

I’m inside a large home. Gleaming white marble floors and high ceilings and windows that look out over a lake. Expensive furniture. I wait as reality catches up with me, as the Assimilation hits. It’s not a word you taught me, but then you taught me nothing but point and click so…

It’s my house. It shouldn’t surprise me except that, reality to reality, I’m normally about the same. I look the same, with thinning brown hair and light skin and brown eyes. I’m bi, though not always out about it and sometimes so deeply repressed I think I enjoy watching swimming for the sport. I like the same foods and the same kinds of movies. And I’m sure I’m not into white marble.

But as the Assimilation lashes me fully to this reality, to this me, I remember that Jason and Abi outvoted me on the décor. My spouses. I smile. And then I move to the window to take in the view of our private lake in eastern Minnesota, bio-engineered miniature triceratops grazing around the banks.

I have rules of my own, now, aside from the two you gave me. The first is that I have to stay in each reality at least a full day unless I’m about to die. Which happens, occasionally, when I find myself in a reality where I’m a pearl diver that gets caught in a shell, or a competitor in some sort of death game, or coughing up my heart because of a deadly contagion, or just poor and in the wrong place. Sometimes I really can’t stay, and breaking my rule seems like a fine idea because fuck those realities anyway. Otherwise I give it a day, to see if it might be the One.

This place has possibilities. I’m a chef, like I always wanted to be, and own the hottest restaurant in the Midwest. Jason is a former swimmer, current coach at the largest private college in the state. Abi is a geneticist, which partly explains the triceratops. I only work three nights a week and have the house to myself at the moment. I wave at the window and it becomes a screen. I open the news, my gestures practiced like this isn’t the first time I’ve had a computer integrated into every surface of my home. But the skills are mine now and I try not to wonder at what really happens to the mes whose bodies I Assimilate. Are they still in here, distinct, or am I some Ouroboros skipping through realities eating myself, over and over again? I wonder if you knew and never told me, or if it really even matters?

The news helps me remember what I’ve Assimilated. The country is a queerocracy of sorts, or at least it seems to be. After a health scare generations ago, natural births have been outlawed and the restrictions on queer relationships not only lifted, they reversed. In the face of a devastating disease that was sweeping through heterosexual communities, a queer majority arose to power and has been setting policy ever since.

Which also helps to explain the triceratops—genetics are leaps and bounds beyond that reality you found me in, to make sure the disease doesn’t resurge. Want a kid? Just apply and one can be whipped up double time, regardless of whose DNA you want to use. Of course, there are articles about discrimination in the application process, but it doesn’t sound so bad. Jason wants kids but I don’t and Abi doesn’t and so we don’t really have to deal with it, and anyway three-parent households like ours get fast-tracked so there’s no rush to decide.

There’s still violence, and there are protests about income inequality and police violence and voting rights and it looks a mess. Does that mean this isn’t my reality? My One? You never really told me how I’d know, and there are days I just stand and stare at the wonders around me and think, is this enough? This is the best candidate I’ve ever seen for a perfect world. For me, at least, and isn’t that the point of the game?

My hand trembles, just the smallest of motions. I need a drink. I squint at a clock. 10 a.m. I head to the kitchen, to my domain, and open the liquor cabinet, remember my last argument with Jason about my drinking. Another thing about me that never seems to change. I find a bottle of bourbon and pour myself a glass and glide into an opulent room with the softest couch I’ve sat on and gesture to the wall to bring up my media library. I have seasons of brand new Star Trek to catch up on. I smile.

Later on Jason and Abi get home and I cook a meal and we all fuck and fall asleep on a bed that would have taken up my whole apartment back in the reality you found me in. I don’t dream. I never dream. In the morning I cook breakfast and wave goodbye to Jason and Abi and go back to the kitchen and do the dishes and then I take the gun in my hand and pull the trigger. Click.

I don’t think I’ll every stop hating you for this. Every day I think about your smile when I pulled the trigger and I think you bastard, you fucking bastard, you know now. You know if it ends with the click or if anything’s left behind. You know if what I’m doing is traveling from world to world or really, truly sending every living thing in a universe blinking out.

I can almost get myself to believe that it’s all still there behind me. That you lied or made it up to torture me or test me. That you’re God come down to Earth to give amazing head and see if humanity is really worthy of being saved and every time I pull the trigger I’m damning not just myself but everyone. It must seem sick that I want that now but at least if you were God you could just bring it back. Whatever I’ve done you can undo and I can burn in Hell a year for every life I snuffed out but it can be made right in the end.

I close my eyes. I count to five. I smell burning. I open my eyes, and I’m in space. Which isn’t really new but rare enough that the novelty hasn’t worn thin. In front of me a planet sits against a plain of stars, The Assimilation hits and I look down to find a report in my hand I’m supposed to be delivering to the captain, who is exactly my type but ever since I slept with her two weeks ago hasn’t spoken to me and has shifted my duty schedule to keep me in engineering.

Not exactly perfect, but I love space. The promise of it. I deliver the report and the captain gives me a smile that says she’s thinking about things and needs some space. I nod and take back the report after she’s signed it and busy myself with routine maintenance. I always love finding that I can do things. Like repair a spaceship. Or play an instrument. I’ve always wanted to be more musical and there’s something exciting about finding out that somewhere in the infinity of universes there is a me who is, something magical about watching your hands move with such confidence doing something you’ve never been able to do before.

Our ship is attacked as I’m repairing duct work, and I remember we’re at war. Not with some alien threat but with a splinter group of humans, ones that left Earth behind for greener pastures. Wealthy people seeking a place they hadn’t spoiled, while other wealthy people who were still making a lot on Earth felt threatened and so started this whole damn thing, which isn’t really being fought by the wealthy at all but by people in love with space, blowing each other up because that’s the only way to see the stars.

We win the fight. I do more repairs and sleep. I get a message from the Captain in the morning saying that we should talk, that we need to talk, but that everything is okay. I take the gun and I pull the trigger. Click.

I wonder how long you did this, how many realities you saw, how many ways you realized that for every good there was a better, for every better there was an even better. I didn’t kill you, I know. If you really did die with the rest of the reality I was born to, then you killed yourself. Yourself and everything I had ever known.

I think if that first new reality had been in space, or with Jason and Abi, I would have just thrown the gun into the deepest ocean I could get to or into space and forgotten about it. Let it all go. Tried to forget I was used to kill a universe. But that first new reality had been…not much. I was worse off than I had been when I met you. Not quite hungry but on my way. Not terrible but when you’re told that somewhere out there you’ve won, that all you have to do is pull a trigger and you don’t even have to see the aftermath?

I count to five. I open my eyes. I’m back in that hotel room where I met you. I freeze, waiting for the Assimilation. I remember you telling me that there are an infinite number of realities out there. Infinite. That they’re blinking out of existence every moment. That it means no reality is really unique, that somewhere out there are an infinite number of copies. Exact copies. So no harm, really, in ending a few. No harm, really, in going around until you find the one that suits you best. Why else would there be a gun, if not to act as some sort of remote control that allows you to find the channel you want to watch, for as long as you want to watch?

The memories are familiar, mine. But even as I fail to find any discrepancy between this life and the one you took from me, I wonder if I’d even know, if the Assimilation would take that from me as well. But I remember some things. The convention, the reason for being in the hotel, it’s the same. My life, the same. My plans, to get drunk in the bar, the same. So is this my reality, my original, somehow spared destruction, or is this a copy of it? And does it matter? And where are you?

If you’re here, I’ll know. I’ll know and I’ll kiss you and then punch you in the face and then maybe together we can get back to exploring the multiverse because it will mean I haven’t destroyed anything. I race to the bar, to the seat where I met you. I look around. You’re not here. I wait. I wait and I drink and I wait and you’re not here and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that means but the gun is digging into my back and I just want to scream, to cry, to do something that will get you out of hiding. You win, okay, you win. Whatever you were trying to tell me or teach me, you win. I scream it. You win. People look at me, make calming gestures, and I pull out the gun and see the fear in their eyes the moment before I pull the trigger. Click.

Should I just give it away, like you did? Find some poor fuck and make them pull the trigger. Find out if I’m still there when they disappear. Would it matter? There’s a universe out there that is perfect, that is fair to everyone and good to everyone. But do I even belong there? Click.

You told me the rules to the game, but if I win does that mean that everyone else loses? Click.

You shouldn’t have given me the gun, shouldn’t have killed my reality, shouldn’t have left me alone with only a half-drunk memory of you to ask questions of, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have. Click.

Every time I pull the trigger, a reality dies. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I count to five. I open my eyes. I drop the gun to the ground, which is grassy and cold with morning dew. You were a coward. I am a coward. And neither of us deserve to win. After a moment the Assimilation hits. A world, a universe like so many others. Imperfect. Full of stars. I pick up the gun.

© 2017 by Charles Payseur

 

Author’s Note: This is one of those stories where I had the title first and the idea of this reality hopping game the main character was playing. So for me it was thinking of this game of shoots and ladders, of destruction and bridges, as well as examining the main character’s desire for something better without him having an idea of what that would look like. I tried to explore with the story and the main character the seduction of a perfect life and not wanting to work at it, wanting it given whole and gleaming, and with turning away from imperfection rather than dealing with it or trying to make it better. It went through quite a few drafts, to be honest, so sort of like the story I was never quite satisfied with what I had, but I hope that this version gets across some of what I wanted to say.

 

charlespayseurCharles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, The Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews, contributes as short fiction specialist at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

 

 

 

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