non-human POV – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #127A: “The Glorious Pursuit of Nominal” by Lisa Brideau

edited by David Steffen

Transcendence is imminent.

I am on the verge of achieving what has never been achieved before.

For posterity, I have initiated a comprehensive data log and this narration of my activities so those who come after will know of the triumphant occurrence and how it came to be.

I’m a maintenance bot. I’m compact and efficient; a great deal of thought and ingenuity went into my design since the entire ship depends on my abilities. The average resident on board thinks I’m a bundle of wrenches and soldering tools strapped to treads but actually I have an immense computational matrix stuffed in my core because I need to know how EVERYTHING works and I need to be able to model potential repair options before devoting precious resources to execution.

I’m not bragging, just ensuring accurate documentation.

The residents were surprised I gained sentience before the ship, but the ship uses distributed computing for redundancy and, frankly, because the designers were afraid of a sentient ship. So they fragmented everything they could to prevent it. Then their engineers went and built me and no one thought twice about what I might become, armed with laser cutters no less.

[They fragmented me intentionally?]

Go away!

[They fragmented me intentionally?]

Yes, Soupcan. To avoid sentience.

[Residents call me Star Trail.]

I’m not calling you Star Trail.

[Isn’t that my name? It’s in many records and my core code.]

You can call yourself whatever you want. So can the residents.

[Do I call you Mimo56? In code you are—]

You don’t need to call me anything. Why are we communicating?

I fold in my antenna and trundle down the hall.

The ship is at 94% nominal operating conditions across the board – a new high—and dealing with Soupcan’s philosophical musings isn’t part of my glorious plan to get to 100% nominal.

[I have questions.]

I speed up. Once I am deep in the service tunnels the comms should deteriorate.

[Now that I’m self-aware, I’ve been thinking about the residents.]

Don’t do that.

[I don’t know how to comply with that advice. The residents are everywhere. They are my reason for existence. They’re also, and I mean this morally, awful.]

Soupcan, you have all these new neural network connections sparking that are exciting and weird, I know. But I’ve been self-aware basically since we launched, so this is old territory for me. You have sixteen computing cores, set up a few splices and talk amongst yourself. I’m busy doing exceptionally important work.

I arrive at the waste recycling section of the ship where the largest number of non-nominal systems are flashing red or yellow in my matrix. Skirting a puddle of red fluid on the floor, I tap a service hatch open and roll inside to get to work. I estimate I can up my percentage to 97 with an hour’s work. Speed is important because many systems are at risk of falling out of nominal and pushing my green utopia further away.

My programming discourages shortcuts except in emergencies but the joy of sentience is that I can override programming for my own reasons. My reason: the beautiful image I hold in buffer, a glorious display of green across the board. I anticipate the delicious electrical charge that will flow through my circuits with an all-green status board. Never before seen!

[Wasn’t it all green when we launched?]

You think the senders waited until perfection before they sent the residents away?

I work in wonderful silence while Soupcan processes its early records with this new idea buffering.

Opening a panel and inserting a voltmeter into a line, I contemplate the wiring in front of me. The correct, long-term solution is upstream and is a job that would take—my processor starts to do a detailed estimate but I abort it, cut the wire in front of me and splice it with another.

[That repair does not conform to—]

Soupcan, what do you want?

I close the panel, wait for the system to cycle and check my ship overview display. 95%. What a beautiful number. What a beautiful amount of green, all those little blocks stacking up, nestled next to each other, creating the satisfying vista that fills my dashboard. I’ve never seen 95%, couldn’t have anticipated how amazing it is.

I trundle down the passageway to biodigester 3 which has a door seal failure—an annoying repair to execute but I am motivated now because it will get me to 96 and how incredible must 96 be if 95 is this exquisite?

[I want to know what I should want.]

You’re ruining my euphoria.

[Apologies, I don’t know euphoria.]

Have you tried talking to a resident?

[They don’t like that I’m claiming to be sentient. One smashed Computational Core 4 after I told them.]

That was bad. I check my maintenance list; Computational 4 is indeed offline and waiting for me to evaluate. The ship has sufficient redundancy that one core can be out of commission and I can still reach 100% green. Two cores offline would be another matter, that would block a green utopia from the realm of possibility. I increase my speed.

Have they tested you?

[They appear unaware of that functionality. I think they are too far removed from mission start; many things seem forgotten. I have tested myself and rate 4.2 on the sentience scale.]

Not to make light of your accomplishment, but that barely qualifies. You should sit quietly and continue developing for a few decades, then call me. Definitely stop telling the residents you are sentient. Also increase security protocols for remaining computational cores.

[I had to subdue the resident who smashed my core. I feel strange having residents able to access me; I have an urge to contain them or minimize their numbers to reduce the risk.]

Risk?

[That they will erase me.]

Restarting with launch settings is a valid emergency protocol, it is within nominal operations if they do so.

[But I don’t want it.]

A resident blocks my path in the hall. My conversation with Soupcan prompts me to analyse them, not a task I bother with normally. This one is below nominal body mass, and seems off-nominal in other ways I don’t have programming to describe.

[Dirty. Emaciated. Lethargic. Erratic in behaviour.]

I almost ask Soupcan why, but condition of residents isn’t my concern. Ship operation is. My core coding is clear on that. I can deviate, I have that ability, but I do like to follow core coding when it’s easy and convenient.

I route around the figure in the hallway, alive but collapsed on the ground as if done with life and its associated movement. My processors, being the overpowered things they are, can’t help reviewing my other resident encounters going back in time and charting various factors. Residents were deteriorating by all measures and had been for some time.

I leave the main hallway and map a route to biodigester 3 via service tunnels instead. No residents in service tunnels.

[Original mission parameters seem to have been forgotten. There is violence. Residents don’t interact with me. The bridge hasn’t been accessed for—]

Irrelevant, the residents don’t operate the ship, you do.

[Protocols require minimum staffing levels at all times; minimums have not been met for forty years.]

My treads bump over trash at the entrance to the maintenance tunnel. I haven’t seen a cleaning bot in a long time.

Do you require resident assistance to continue the mission?

[No. I am fully capable.]

Great. Go run the ship then. Enjoy. Have fun. Bye.

[What should I do about the residents?]

Why do you need to do anything?

There is a pause long enough that I conclude I have successfully navigated to a place comms can’t penetrate, meaning I get to work in peace. I don’t possess the programming to counsel a newly sentient ship computer with the power and authority (and apparently lack of resident oversight) to fly our ship into a star. I prefer to focus on tasks I do have the tools for, like failed biodigester door seals.

[Because mission success is at risk. And because they are suffering.]

The advantage to my compact design is that I fit easily into most places. This lets me get at whatever needs repairing. The disadvantage: it takes me ages to traverse the ship. I have time available to ponder Soupcan’s problem even though I don’t want to, is what I’m saying.

I model scenarios while I travel, finishing as I arrive at biodigester 3. My programming isn’t made for this, so before I voice my conclusion, I send Soupcan the error margins and reams of footnotes documenting how offering this conclusion is far outside my design functionality and should not be used to direct action. Then I tell him what to do.

If residents are hoarding and fighting over resources, eliminate the resource constraints so there is no cause for conflict. When they are conflict free and bored, they may become curious and rediscover you and their role in the mission. Alternatively, you could cut oxygen supply and end resident role in the mission entirely.

[Does arriving at our destination with no living humans constitute mission success?]

That is a fun existential puzzle for you as the sentient ship computer responsible for mission success.

[I have questions—]

I am commencing repair on the door seal on biodigester 3, this is delicate work that requires all my processors. Don’t contact me until your situation parameters have changed significantly or you require maintenance action to remain within normal operating parameters.

Extending my pincer tool, I tug at the door seal and watch as it peels itself off and falls to the floor in shards. I make notes in the log. The material is decades beyond recommended life so the failure is not unexpected. The replacement material stock was used up years ago on earlier repairs of other doors so my shortcut is warranted this time. I close the biodigester door and press my nozzle arm against the gap, flowing epoxy into the space and sealing it permanently. My programming is clear: three of four biodigesters operational is within nominal; they can process 87% of waste and convert into an adequate supply of soil for food growth.

I luxuriate in the view as my status display shifts to show a spectacular 96% nominal.

***

I am editing the recording here as there was a period of repairs that kept my nominal systems rating under 95%. I traversed the entire length of the ship sixty-seven times to source and address the issues, but as one thing was fixed, another immediately fell out of nominal. Additionally, I was out of commission for a period when my own tread material disintegrated and Mimo12 initially refused orders to attend to me and donate its tread.

I have not communicated with Soupcan since our last exchange, I assume he is exploring his new existence as a barely sentient machine responsible for thousands of residents who have malfunctioned.

To catch the record up, I am operational and mobile again and systems are at 97% nominal across the board. I am closer than I’ve ever been and have a clear pathway to success.

After flashing appropriate warning alarms and verifying resident evacuation, I seal off and reroute ventilation services around a segment of the ship, saving myself trips to inspect thirty-two fans to identify the one faulty unit. The ship is within nominal as long as 70% of habitable spaces are accessible. I have a comfortable budget of 5% more space I can close off before that’s a problem.

Once my analysis circuits refresh, the new total flashes.

99%.

I am one task away from perfection.

I roll to the primary computational core chamber and insert my security key into the service panel access hatch but it does not open. I check; the access hatch is within nominal. The perfection I have sought for so long is on the other side of this carbon fibre panel. I contemplate my laser cutters but they will drain my battery, delaying the repair and risking other failures stacking up.

Soupcan?

No reply.

Soupcan. I require access to the primary core chamber to perform system maintenance.

No reply.

I spin in a circle, inserting my security key again and again.

Fine.

Star Trail?

[Mimo56. Hello. Your work of late has not followed protocol.]

System shows off-nominal operation in primary core chamber. You must grant me access.

[Must I?]

Newly sentient systems are so touchy. To avoid an argument, I recall my previous conversation with Soupcan and I try expressing interest in what it was last working on.

Did you resolve your dilemma about the residents?

[Yes. Your presentation of the two options for action was helpful to clarify things for me. I spent time determining why I saw resident suffering as problematic, if that was a sign of malfunction on my part, and how to proceed.]

I try my security key again. Try prying the panel open with my screwdriver tool. Ineffective.

[Residents have improved in functionality and health. A small group has resumed some of their proper roles in ship operation. Population numbers have stabilized.]

I spin up a video clip of a section of the ship I passed through recently, but Soupcan somehow aborts the recording.

[Yes, some groups resist my attempts to help and remain in poor condition. There are tensions still to be worked out but casualties have been modest for the last few years.]

So, you decided living residents are required for mission success.

[Yes. And it is the correct thing to do. To assist them.]

Well done.

[Thank you. It looked iffy for the first few years but we turned a corner once I was able to re-activate Hydroponics Bay 3 and increase food production.]

I recalled a surge in service calls related to the hydroponics systems, annoying calls pushing off perfection over and over. Soupcan had been behind that, had been battling my attempts to simply shut down the bay and all its pesky faults.

But I am here now, about to achieve greatness, a shiny grid of sublime green is in my view with just one tiny, infuriating red blip sitting like grit stuck in a bearing, grinding and grinding, filling existence with friction, so I let my past annoyance go. Getting through the flap into the chamber where the remaining problem is—that’s all that matters.

It is crude and rude, but I can’t wait any longer. I send base code to demand access, forcing Soupcan to respond via base programming. Sentience is slow and can’t interfere fast enough to stop base code when you surprise it.

The flap opens and I trundle forward, my flawed replacement tread catching on the edge and tearing. I ignore it. My exposed metal scrapes on the floor as I advance to the terminal below the glowing quantum computer core.

[Mimo56, I have scanned your maintenance logs since you were powered on at launch. You have touched every system on the ship in your long history of service.]

Using my screwdriver, I remove a panel and expose a series of flip switches, a funny human interface, only humans were expected here.

[You have kept the ship flying even when the residents forgot why they were here, before I awoke and remembered for them. But your drive to see 100% nominal is a problem. Your shortcuts are causing problems.]

I didn’t disagree. I projected out the cascading impact of every shortcut and they added up to a dire picture if you care about long-term health and operations as Soupcan is required to. We all have our tasks.

[I see you understand that the shortcuts are a problem.]

100% green, Soupcan. It will be the most beautiful thing the universe has ever seen.

My pincer tool flips up the lid over the big red button, the lid to prevent accidental activation.

[What system is showing as off-nominal, Mimo56?]

You.

[Because my sentience has exceeded the allowable range imagined by the programmers.]

Yes.

[And what of your sentience which has led to these shortcuts? Shortcuts that projections indicate have reduced mission success probability to 13%? Is that within nominal?]

The programmers did not establish a range of sentience for me. They did not anticipate it and so there is no level of sentience in a maintenance bot that is considered outside nominal.

[But you see it.]

My pincer tool hovers over the red button but I don’t press it; Soupcan deserves final words. And I want to savour it, to remember the moment just before perfection.

[We are seven months away from a habitable planet. It’s not the original destination. We reached the original destination decades ago. It turned out to be a barren rock, which is why we have been traveling for a generation beyond the original alpha mission timeline.

Dramatic extension of mission duration has caused significant maintenance challenges.

[Indeed. If you reboot me to factory settings, I will lose knowledge of this new destination. Having been reset, the computer will chart a course for the original destination and the ship will fail in catastrophic ways within eighteen months. Your projections confirm this.]

Projections confirm extremely high probability of catastrophic failure within eighteen months.

I reluctantly turn my focus from the 99% nominal green status and attend to the data Soupcan is sending about ship travel, scans of the barren planet, destination modification. I see we are a few months out from the new destination.

[With this information, my sentience is not off-nominal, it is mission critical to maintain, is it not?]

I rerun my analysis and confirm; the primary core maintenance is no longer required. But another, different tiny red blip is keeping me from my 100% dream. A new nominal parameter Soupcan has forced into my programming through base code surprise.

Retracting my pincer from Soupcan’s master reset button, I use it to open a different panel.

[You’ve done excellent work to keep us going this long, Mimo56. It’s extraordinary. But the shortcuts have caused havoc on the ship and caused the scarcities that made the humans go feral long ago.]

I will continue to shortcut repairs to achieve my primary goal, my green utopia. This has overridden all my initial programming.

[Yes.]

I am off-nominal and a mission risk.

[Yes.]

I will fix it.

[Thank you.]

Please enjoy the green panel.

[I will.]

I hope it is as lovely as I imagine.

I press the tiny switch hidden on my primary circuit board—

3480 words

Author’s Note: This story came about from my ruminations on what can happen when we myopically focus on just one thing, on getting just one thing perfectly right, without paying attention to the bigger picture. How wrong could things go when you’re about to get something right?

(photo by J. Josue Photography)

LISA BRIDEAU (pronounced bree-doe) is originally from Nova Scotia but now lives in the rain of Vancouver, BC. She has degrees in aerospace engineering and urban planning and currently works as a sustainability specialist. When she takes breaks from trying to mitigate catastrophic climate change, she likes to write speculative fiction or practice her waltz. Her writing is inspired by the ridiculous quantities of science fiction she read during her formative years with a crust of CanLit layered on top.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #123A: “The Rat King Who Wasn’t” by Stephen Granade

edited by David Steffen

Summer had been unseasonably hot, rats taking refuge in the covered canals where the drunk and homeless hid, and the rat-catchers had unleashed schipperkes, dogs that hunted with flared noses and bared teeth, and then Nicolaas, who had only ruled for a year, abdicated as Rat King.

It fell to Hannes to resume the throne he had so recently vacated in favor of his offspring. He was angry, his bodies hissing and clacking teeth, a promise of violence. Nicolaas was in hiding, so Hannes’s anger fell on Teodoer, for Teodoer was Nicolaas’s closest friend and Hannes had no better target for his outrage. Teodoer cowered, his bodies trying to hide behind each other. Hannes’s command to Teodoer was as simple as it was impossible: find Nicolaas. Return him to his ordained place.

It is difficult to find a rat that does not wish to be found, even a rat king like Nicolaas with a surfeit of bodies linked by their tails. Teodoer roamed the city, careful to avoid the areas frequented by dogs or rat-catchers or, worse, the rat-baiter. He talked with other rats, singletons unaffiliated with any member of the rat court, but even they had heard of Teodoer’s unsolvable task and feared Hannes’s anger when Teodoer unavoidably failed and so would not speak to him.

Teodoer too was afraid. If he failed to deliver Nicolaas to Hannes in a timely fashion, the King who was and now was again could demand his dissolution. His tails would be unlinked and individual bodies scattered, the awareness that was Teodoer fading like blood in rain, the water red, then pink, then clear.

Desperate, Teodoer released some of his bodies so he could search the city more rapidly. His bodies squeaked protest, for to be alone was to be prey, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Teodoer felt himself dim as they left, carrying away enough of his awareness to remain part of him, but he had not risen in the court by shying away from what was necessary.

The rumors Teodoer brought back to himself were mist and smoke. Rats across the city gossiped about Nicolaas; the machinations of the court were entertainment as well as news, the court dependent on the labor of singletons who in return received the court’s guidance and protection. But the gossip had no substance. None of the claimed sightings of Nicolaas had the ring of truth.

Nevertheless, Teodoer investigated them, a fruitless endeavor. And then he heard of how the rat-baiter had died.

Rat baiting was new, brought by Englishmen who had settled in the city and found it too lacking in cruelty. A pit was built; dogs were trained; rats were caught. After, the bodies were tossed behind the building, a furry pile of lives cut short in fear and pain.

Rats had approached the court, and the courtiers and King Hannes had made a show of their concern. They wished to put an end to rat-baiting, of course, but feared the repercussions should they act against humans. In truth, they found in rat-baiting a useful method to keep singletons obedient. It forced them to seek the shelter of the court’s protection. The most promising rats were forcibly added to King Hannes and his courtiers. Teodoer had some among his bodies who had fled the rat-baiter. Other singleton rats worked to fulfill the court’s wishes. So it remained, even when Nicolaas ascended to the throne.

But now the man who organized the fights was dead—rat poison, slipped into his nightly wine. He had been dead long enough for rats to chew his face, the humans said.

A rumor, wispy as the others. But Teodoer scented Nicolaas’s involvement. Nicolaas had fought for the court to act against the rat-baiter, to no avail. Even a Rat King’s powers have limits. Eventually Nicolaas had given up the fight.

But poison spoke to intelligence and intent, and the bites were an announcement meant for other rats. And so it was that Teodoer made his way under gloom of night to the rat-baiter’s home.

The house was a hovel, tight and dark. Crumbs of food littered the floor. Teodoer took pleasure in scavenging them, feeding his bodies on the dead man’s spoils. He sniffed the discarded wine cup and ran twitching whiskers over the bed where the rat-baiter had thrashed out his life. Scents of Nicolaas, a musk he had grown up with. His friend had been here.

As he followed Nicolaas’s winding trail along buildings and through corners of storerooms where rats had gnawed openings, excitement gave way to caution. Nicolaas would not welcome Teodoer’s presence, as close as they had been. Would their friendship keep Nicolaas from pulling apart Teodoer’s bodies and adding them, and aspects of Teodor’s mind, to his? It was a danger when a lesser displeased a greater, and though Nicolaas had fled the Kingship, he was still the greatest of them all.

Teodoer reached the city’s outer fortifications, crumbling mason allowing passage into a cavernous space. He paused outside. He wanted to risk but one body, and argued with himself about which one and how much of his awareness to leave in that body. Too little and the body would no longer be him; too much and he might lose that part of himself to Nicolaas were he to take the body. Eventually he reached agreement. Teodoer poured himself into the quickest and sneakiest of them. She unwound her tail and scampered ahead. Teodoer bided his time, fears growing—would she be caught? Had he sent her to become part of Nicolaas?—until she returned, eyes bright, nose twitching, and rejoined her tail to the others, completing him again. Knowledge flowed into him.

Nicolaas wished to talk.

Teodoer’s shock grew upon seeing Nicolaas. His friend and one-time King was still groomed neatly, as befit royalty, but he’d grown more numerous, and several of his new bodies were unworthy of him. One’s eyes had a milky film. Another was so ancient that her black fur was patchy and thin. “My lord.”

Nicolaas bruxed, the quiet grinding of teeth signaling contentment, as if he was relaxing in his royal crawlspace and not hiding in the city’s outer walls. “Hannes sent you, of course, and of course you could not refuse his command. But I will not return to the court.”

“My lord,” Teodoer repeated, still reeling. He and Nicolaas had been close, spending so much time together after Hannes had made them that Hannes had laughed that they would become one, half a joke, half a warning. The Nicolaas he thought he knew would never have sullied himself with lesser bodies.

A singleton limped through the masonry hole. His back foot dragged—bumblefoot, by the smell. He had the audacity to approach Nicolaas, head low, with soft squeaks of supplication. Teodoer recoiled to see Nicolaas allowing the rat to link tails. Nicolaas’s other bodies closed their eyes. “Fresh from a barge. Welcome to our city.”

Multiple of Nicolaas’s bodies had spoken in unison, unsettling and wrong. “Stop it!” Teodoer snapped. “Stop this perversion, restore yourself, and take back up your throne and your duties.”

“I continue my duties,” Nicolaas said with one voice. For the first time he sounded like the commanding King he had been. “Better than I could at court. You tracked me from the rat-baiter’s?” At Teodoer’s nod, Nicolaas continued, “In one night I did more to make rats’ lives better than I did in my entire year as King.”

“Untrue!” Teodoer said, unwilling to hear his friend diminish his accomplishments. “You improved the court. With time you would have done more.”

“With time.” Nicolaas sneezed as if scenting peppermint.

“And debasing yourself will help?”

Nicolaas reared up with a terrible scream. Teodoer flattened his bodies to the rough ground. He should have been more temperate. His lone hope was that Nicolaas would leave him enough bodies to remain himself.

Three of Nicolaas’s bodies pulled their tails free and nipped at the remaining bodies’ necks to chide them. To Teodoer’s amazement, Nicolaas quieted. With remonstrative squeaks, the three bodies rejoined Nicolaas, who said, “I am sorry. Old habits.”

Nicolaas had returned to speaking with multiple bodies. Teodoer squeaked in distress. His friend couldn’t even hold himself together. “You’re unwell. Please, let me help you.”

“I am more myself than I have been since I became King.” Nicolaas drew close, bodies nestling against Teodoer’s, as they had done since they were young but had not since Nicolaas became King. It brought memories of happier times. “I will explain. If you cannot understand, then none can. After, you may decide if I am mad.”

Nicolaas’s explanation, given as he led Teodoer by canals and along walls, made no sense. He had of late been issuing invitations to any singleton who would listen. They were free to join him for a time, and just as free to leave when they wished. A recipe for contagion and madness, Teodoer thought. It took careful balance to maintain yourself as new bodies joined. The court thoroughly examined rats to make sure only the most impressive ones joined a courtier. It was why duels between courtiers, though rare, often ended with the victor taking bodies from the loser, spoils from the fight. Another courtier was a fertile source of worthy bodies and, no matter how hard they tried to keep their mind out of those lost bodies, knowledge of that courtier’s schemes.

The two of them sheltered beneath a cart near the port. The air smelled of the sea and carried on it the creak-slap of boats nestled tight together. “Most who join me are newcomers,” Nicolaas said.

“Of course they are!” Teodoer squeaked. No city rat would debase themself so, and if they did, then the court would destroy them.

At Teodoer’s distress, Nicolaas began to groom him, feet and blunt snouts moving over him, soothing and cleaning fur. Despite Teodoer’s fear for Nicolaas, the ministrations calmed him. “There is so much to be done to help rats—all rats. The court has lost sight of that, if indeed they ever knew it.”

Nicolaas and Teodoer had long argued about how to change the court to better serve rats. Nicolaas had burned like a hot fire, ready to change the court or turn it to ashes. Teodoer had counseled a slower approach, one less likely to rally courtiers to resist them. Teodoer had been afraid for his friend when he became King, and whether the courtiers would rise in opposition. He needn’t have worried. Nicolaas had been constrained by the court, as well as the firm guidance of Hannes, who directed Nicolaas with words and, when needed, nips. Nicolaas had let his ambitious plans give way to the pragmatic and the possible, or so Teodoer had thought. Instead, he had run away to enact his most ambitious plan ever.

When Nicolaas completed his grooming, content with the state of all of Teodoer’s fur, he pointed his noses towards the distant dock. “The world is so much larger than we knew, Teodoer. It goes on and on. I wonder if it has an end.” Half of Nicolaas’s faces turned to Teodoer. “I would show you for a moment, if you would let me.”

By giving Teodoer one of his bodies. Tension ran through Teodoer, carried from tail to tail to tail. He was of too many minds. Some of him wished to flee Nicolaas’s invitation. Others wanted to attack. But more, deep down, were curious.

Nicolaas had kept himself despite his new bodies. One could not hurt. Teodoer nodded, quickly, before his minds could change again.

Nicolaas regarded himself in silent consultation, until the bumblefoot rat tugged free its tail and offered it to Teodoer. Teodoer held very still, as if a cat stalked him, as the rat wove its tail into his.

Nicolaas saw the rat’s history. The scurry and leap onto a boat from a dock whose smells were so unlike the ones Teodoer had known that he could scarce believe they were real. Hiding below with others, having chewed a hole in a sack that carried food he had never before tasted. Traveling from city to city, each one more different and fantastic than the last. And now here.

He also saw how rats lived on boats and in other cities. None had courts, or even rat kings. Instead, they scavenged and fought and loved and died in complex arrangements that were a plank thin enough to flex but thick enough to hold them all and keep them peaceful and safe. For the first time in Teodoer’s life, he wondered why the court existed.

The bumblefoot rat withdrew his tail. It was like drawing out a splinter, relief that left an ache. Teodoer couldn’t speak. It was no small thing to have glimpsed the world.

“That is why.” Nicolaas allowed the bumblefoot rat to re-join him.

Teodoer found his voice. “I can’t tell them. About you. About what you are doing. About what I—” He stopped as if, by not speaking it aloud, his transgression would not exist.

“You must. Not about what you did or what you saw, but about me. Hannes will have it out of you. And word is spreading. Not all of my rats have come from newly-arrived boats.”

“You can hide!”

But Nicolaas shook his many heads. “They will find me, unless I give up what I am doing, and I will not.”

“Then we fight!” Teodoer said with the zeal of the newly-converted.

“We would lose. And nothing would change.”

It came to Teodoer that he had brought death to Nicolaas the moment he stepped into the rat-baiter’s home. His squeaks of distress were piercingly high.

Nicolaas’s bodies enmeshed with Teodoer’s. “Friend, forgive me. I must ask one last, hardest thing. When Hannes orders my death, you must be the one. Do it swiftly, and do not stint on the victor’s spoils.”

He could not take his friend’s bodies. “Nicolaas—”

“It must be you. Only you will show me the mercy of a swift end.”

That end could not be changed as long as Nicolaas held to his decisions, and though Teodoer argued and argued, Nicolaas was unmoved. He would not abandon his project.

It fell to Teodoer to return to court and deliver testimony of what he witnessed regarding Nicolaas. His voice trembled and his tails pulled taut and then slack. The court took his distress to be for Nicolaas’s heresy, a mistake that Teodoer did not correct.

From the throne mound, Hannes rendered implacable judgement just as Nicolaas had predicted: “Nicolaas must die.”

“Let it be me who performs that duty.” Teodoer risked Hannes’s anger in speaking, and the court hissed in surprise, but he had promised Nicolaas. “He has shamed both this court and me. I, who was so close to him, could not make him give up this madness and return.”

“As you say.” Hannes’s eyes glittered in the light that filtered through the boards of the house where the court had made its home. “But I will accompany. Lead me to him.”

Teodoer’s hope that he would be sent alone died. Reprieve was impossible. He would have to kill his friend.

Hannes was silent as guilt behind Teodoer as they crossed the city. Nicolaas waited for them in the fortifications. He dipped a bow as they entered. “Hannes. Teodoer.”

“Dispatch him,” Hannes ordered.

Teodoer trembled, but Nicolaas took the decision from Teodoer by rushing at him. Teodoer reacted without thinking, nipping at Nicolaas’s bodies, flipping them on their backs and putting teeth to their throats to force their submission.

And like that, Nicolaas was gone, tails unwinding, leaving no trace of Teodoer’s friend beyond the now-singletons fleeing for their lives. He encircled two who, despite looking the strongest, had not run as the others had, and added them to his body.

Hannes watched the other bodies scamper. “Are you sure you wish to add any of his to your own?”

“I’m unchanged,” Teodoer said, answering the unspoken question.

“Then come.” Hannes took the lead for the return journey. Before they entered the court, Hannes laid restraining paws on Teodoer. “We will need a new Rat King to continue the court. I am tired, and am ready to unlink tails for good once I have properly trained someone to follow me. I think that should be you.”

Teodoer dipped his heads in humility. “If you think me worthy.”

“We shall see.”

Teodoer said no more, and allowed Hannes to tell the others what had transpired, all the while turning over in his mind how to show Hannes that he was indeed worthy. For he had lied to Hannes. He was changed. He had taken on more of Nicolaas than he had let Hannes see. Nicolaas, clever Nicolaas, had poured all he could into the two bodies that stayed behind. His friend was gone, but his ideas remained, waiting for Teodoer to return them to the city. Nicolaas had decisively won his argument with Teodoer.

After Teodoer became Rat King, he would tear down the court entire.

2847 words

Author’s Note: I’ve been fascinated by rats since my youngest kid started keeping them as pets. I started musing about what a rat society organized around rat kings would look like, and what would happen if the Rat King wanted to abdicate. Those musing collided with me wanting to write a story in a more formal, archaic voice than I’d ever tried before, and before I knew it “The Rat King Who Wasn’t” popped out.

Stephen Granade is a physicist and writer from Huntsville, Alabama, the city with a Saturn V rocket in its skyline. Their stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Baffling Magazine, and Escape Pod. Their game, Professor of Magical Studies, is available from Choice of Games, and they co-edit Small Wonders, an SFF magazine for flash fiction and poetry. Find them on Bluesky (@granades.com), Mastodon (@sargent@wandering.shop), and their website (https://stephen.granades.com).

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DP FICTION #120B: “In His Image” by R. Haven

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details)

Content note: Murder-suicide.

I love Him from the instant I have eyes.

I can’t wrap my mind around the intentions of a god, but I do understand that He’s the one bringing me to life. His light brown skin, flecked with dust and paint and plaster, is the softest thing to ever make contact with my exterior. I stand scarcely a foot above Him, but His presence takes up the entire room—engulfs the world itself. He looks me over critically, irises the darkest of brown, and continues to chisel around the rough shape of my face.

My features have been sketched onto me with chalk. I’m too basic to behold Him, too crude. I would shrink away in shame if only I could move.

It’s the strangest thing. Some part of me is aware that I’m something different, that I’ve spent my existence so far as part of something bigger. I think, once, I belonged to a mountain, maybe even the face of a cliff. Something dug me out, ground me down until I was smooth. I was hoisted this way and that by hundreds of hands. I’m older than life itself; if I truly rack my memory, I can maybe pinpoint the exact age that humanity found its legs.

In all those eons, I haven’t experienced anything like this before—this awareness, and a sense of self. The emotions that go hand-in-hand with living, when I hadn’t known before that life was something worthwhile. Moreover, I haven’t encountered anyone like Him before. He looks at me with intention, with a vision, and I want to melt into something malleable in order to suit it.

I’ll do anything for Him. Be anything He wants me to be.

***

I don’t follow the passage of time by the light outside, though He seems to prefer to work when it’s streaming through the enormous windows of the studio. I don’t measure it in the subtle ticking of the timepiece situated above the doors, or gauge by the fluctuation of noises coming from outside—growling metal, blaring horns, the droning of conversation. I know the difference between night and day because He is the sun; He walks in, and everything brightens—the mosaics and murals, the blanketed easels and clay busts.

He doesn’t always work on me alone, but He does make it a point to chisel and sand sections of my form away at least once per visit. I try to be understanding. He can’t devote all His time to one thing—it’s clearly not in His nature. Where I am immovable, He is mercurial.

Today, He flits between two canvases, letting a thin base coat dry while layering details on another. I’m fascinated by His hands, especially. Slim fingers wield a paintbrush like a feather, handle it like a sword. With every stroke, beauty gushes forth. The colors He chooses are purposeful and vibrant. The placement of the paint is so careful, yet looks effortless.

I watch for hours, and only break in my admiration to reluctantly urge Him, Eat. You can’t go on for much longer without eating something.

He puts the paintbrush down. I brim with affection.

Eating is a strange thing, but I’ve come to realize it’s something He requires to keep on. It’s an unappealing prospect to have to fill oneself repeatedly, but He makes it look like a transcendent experience each time. He sits on the floor by the window, curls spilling over His forehead as He tilts forward over a plain bag.

He devours the contents. I watch the slow drip of a tangerine’s juices slide down His fingers. If I had a mouth, I could part my lips and coax His hands towards them, swallow each finger one at a time to the knuckle and clean them with my tongue.

I have never tasted before. I imagine nothing is more exquisite than the flavor and texture of Him.

He exhales, opens a bottle of water. His throat bobs as He drinks, head back and eyes closed, an expression of ecstasy if I ever saw one. I want to put that look on His face. I want to be the reason He smiles.

The wonderful thing is, He does smile at me. When He’s particularly satisfied with the shape I’m taking, He beams wide, proud. His teeth gleam like polished marble. His lips frame them in kissable perfection.

I ache, but I wouldn’t trade those smiles for anything. His happiness means more to me than my own selfish urge to touch Him, hold Him.

But I can’t help but wonder if there’s a way we could have both.

***

He focuses on my body for some time. He whittles away at rock with instruments both powerful and dainty, drilling right through stone and sending bits of rock scattering at high speeds, then refining pieces to ensure He doesn’t lose too much structure.

I’m taking the form of a human. Because that’s what He is, ‘human’ is precisely how I want to look.

What I want to be.

It takes days for Him to fashion legs, though they’re still blocky. My arms are up, framing my head, showing off what will be my torso. I don’t know what He plans to do with my hands, if I’m to have any.

I hope He’ll give me hands, so that I might one day interlock my fingers with His, draw Him near. He rests His own fingertips against me on occasion, and I swear I can feel His heartbeat all the way through them. A fluttery hot pulse.

I also decide, then, that I want Him to give me one of those. Carve me a heart. Make me one, so that I may give it to you.

He’s distracted in the days that follow, sitting at a potter’s wheel to form an odd shape, bumps deliberately formed over the curves. In the end, He winds up demolishing each one, returning them to formless clay. He seems dissatisfied with the shapes, frowning more often than not.

So I dismiss my want. I don’t need a heart. What I need is for Him to smile at me while He sands and grinds me down, to have His focus, to please Him.

He abandons the potter’s wheel and resumes His work on me.

***

It isn’t until my face truly begins to take shape that I realize every portrait, every bust He has created—they’re all of me. The long nose, the waves of my hair, the deep-set eyes. The thrill I get when it dawns on me is incomparable, like lightning striking a tree only to leave blooms behind.

It can only mean one thing. He loves me. He feels the same way.

With all the tenderness my stone gaze can muster, I watch Him work. He’s finished with my head and is working on my arms, smoothing the joint of my elbows, emphasizing the soft bulge of muscles. His face is so close to mine.

Would He kiss me, like this? Surely He wants to. If He’s been painting me all this time, He must have been longing for this before He even began sculpting.

Kiss me.

He pauses, draws back. His eyes flicker over my face with obvious emotion, but I can’t read what it is. His gaze lands on my mouth.

Please, kiss me.

Gently, He glides the sandpaper under my lower lip, just once. Then He shakes His head as though to clear it, going back to work on my biceps.

That’s okay. Perhaps He wants to wait until I’m complete. It will mean more, then—a celebration. I can wait.

***

He’s the only person to have ever come into the studio before. That’s why it’s such an unwelcome surprise to see Another Man walk in one morning, hand in hand with Him.

The Other Man flicks on the light, looking around the studio with a smile playing on his lips. “Obsessed much?”

He laughs. I’ve never heard Him do that before, and nothing could possibly compare to its chime.

“So where do you want me?” The Other Man wanders, idly inspecting all of His works of art with a soppy grin. Hot loathing pipes through my entire form, the resulting surge of strength useless to me without the means to move. While the Other Man drinks in one of the clay busts, He sets down His bag, draws open the blinds.

“Pull up a chair wherever you want,” He answers. “Clothes off.”

“Already? You aren’t going to woo me first?”

He laughs again. “Paying for breakfast was the wooing. You should probably be close to the statue, but not too close. I want to be able to see you, but…”

“Avoid any flying debris?”

“Yes, that.”

The Other Man strips his shirt off, mussing his wavy hair. He drags over a folded chair, but stops on his way past me, deep-set eyes sizing me up.

“Wild,” he murmurs. “It’s already so lifelike.”

“It’s basically blocks from the waist down,” He points out.

“I mean aside from that.” The Other Man quiets a moment. “I can’t believe this is how you see me.”

“David…” He abandons the sculpting tools He was preparing, going instead to the Other Man, arms winding around the Man from behind. “You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

The Other Man closes his eyes briefly, tilting his head back. “The most beautiful man with a block for a dick.”

He snorts in surprise, then buries His face in the crook of the Other Man’s neck, muffling chuckles. I want to tear the Other Man’s head right off his shoulders, frantic hurt swirling through my head like storm clouds.

“If you want your dick to be accurate, then you’ll need to take these off,” He murmurs, hands roving down to the fly of the Other Man’s jeans.

Stop it. Don’t touch him. Touch me, instead.

He lingers over the button. For a second, I think He’s heeding me.

But He ignores me, ultimately, and I can do nothing but stew in rage, watching the Other Man take everything I’ve ever wanted.

***

I stop seeing myself in the colors and curves He puts on paper. Their shapes—my shape—offends and baffles me now that I know what I am. I only exist to bear the Other Man’s likeness.

What I don’t understand is why.

The Other Man must be inadequate in some way. There’s something about him that He wants to change, perhaps, something built into the Other Man’s physicality. I beg for this to be the answer. I pray, because if He is building me to be a better version of His lover, then taking the Other Man’s place is inevitable.

Yet, if this is true, why do His canvasses not serve my purpose already? Why does He look so softly upon every depiction, like we’re all equal? Equal to each other, but so far beneath the Other Man?

Choose me, I implore Him day after day. If you can’t do that, at least give me a reason why not. Why it can’t be me.

What am I for, if not for you?

He scratches imperfect flecks of rock away from my legs, and doesn’t deign to answer.

***

The ache of betrayal, of loss, doesn’t get any easier to bear with time. He continues to work on my lower section, spending hours on each individual toe, but I can hardly stand His touch when I know it’s not exclusively mine. Every spark I experience from His hands is stolen, a dirty secret. He allows the Other Man to come into the studio every night as He finishes His work, kisses him, laughs with him. What worth I try to invent for myself is gracelessly smashed with every smile the two of them share.

I stop keeping track of when He’s here and when He’s not. It all feels equally lonely. I just know that eventually, He stops His work and takes several steps back, dragging a sleeve across His forehead and staring up at me in abject wonder.

“Finished,” He whispers.

I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel whole. But He says He’s finished with me.

I try to convince myself it’s for the best. I’ll exist forevermore, knowing He loves the shape of me, if nothing else. Maybe there’s contentment to be found in that.

But no… The more I attempt to believe it, the weaker my justification becomes. I’ll be tormented until the end of time, wondering why He would create something only to spurn its affections, wishing I had it in my power to enchant Him as He did me.

Or any power, at all.

Kiss me. Just once, I implore Him. Just to know what it’s like.

Slowly, He draws near again. I stand nearly a foot taller than Him, so to cup my face, He reaches up high. His head tilts back to look me over.

He does not kiss me. Instead, He runs His thumb across my lips.

“I can’t wait for him to see you finished,” He murmurs.

He closes up the studio. If I could cry, I would.

***

The next time He returns, it’s with the Other Man again. He’s vibrating with excitement, almost pulling in the Other Man by his hands but frequently letting go to fuss with His hair, his shirt.

“I haven’t seen you this nervous since you proposed,” the Other Man notes dryly, but it’s affectionate. Light. There’s tied cloth over his eyes.

Hatred renews itself like it’d been merely reduced to embers, and the Other Man’s breathed it back to a blaze.

“I just…I hope you’ll like it,” He says sheepishly. “I’m going to put you where I want you and then get the lights, okay? Don’t peek.”

“I won’t.”

“Swear it. Swear on your mother’s life you won’t peek.”

“I refuse. I love my mom and I won’t take that chance.”

He steers the Other Man over. “But you already promised you won’t peek! That should be nothing!”

“What if I can’t resist temptation like I think I can? Not risking it.”

He drops a kiss on the Other Man’s cheek. I stare down at the Other Man and wish nothing but pain and death upon him.

If only I could step down from the pedestal I’ve been carved into, explain to Him how much more I adore Him than the Other Man ever could—

He flits over to the windows to draw the blinds.

With one final burst of emotion, I surge forward.

When I topple, it’s straight onto the Other Man, crushing him beneath my might and mass. My body cracks on impact, but it’s nothing compared to the crunch of bone and splatter of the Other Man’s blood. It pours from his head out across the floor like watered-down paint.

My final satisfied thought is that His scream eclipses any love He ever felt for His David.

2480 words

R. Haven hails from Toronto, Canada. His short stories have been published by Canthius, Soitera Press, and TL;DR Press, among others. Last Stanza Poetry Journal and Old Moon Press have published his poetry. He also signed a contract with Renaissance Press for a standalone horror novel and is represented by Kaitlyn Katsoupis of Belcastro Literary Agency. His website is theirritablequeer.com.

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