science fiction – Page 4 – Diabolical Plots

BOOK REVIEW: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

written by David Steffen

Insurgent is a 2012 dystopic science fiction novel by Veronica Roth, the sequel to Divergent (reviewed here) and the second in the Divergent trilogy.

These stories take place in a future Chicago which is walled-off from the rest of the world and has been split into five factions: Candor (who value truth, Abnegation (who value selflessness), Amity (who value harmony), Dauntless (who value courage), and Erudite (who value intelligence). This order has existed for a long time, relatively undisturbed, but now the world is reeling from coordinated attack masterminded by Erudite that involved turning much of the deadly and well-trained Dauntless into mindless killing drones. Now the remnants of Dauntless are scattered and trying to figure out how they’re going to fit in in the new shaken order.

Tris Prior was born Abnegation but chose to switch to Dauntless when she turned sixteen, the one opportunity anyone has to switch. Although she is officially Dauntless, she has shown tendencies that seem to say she is actually “Divergent”, which means she has aptitudes for more than one of the factions. This is considered very rare, and very dangerous–others have died for even being suspected of being Divergent. This unusual trait may have saved many lives because she was able to resist the conditioning that turned much of the rest of Dauntless into mindless killing machines.

She and many of Dauntless are now hiding out in Amity, trying to find their next plans. It is a troubled truce with Amity, who value harmony and thus do not get along well with the violent and impulsive Dauntless. But their refuge isn’t going to last very long anyway, because the other members of Dauntless, the ones who sided with Erudite after the original conflict, are coming.

Another quite good book, Tris is an interesting and compelling protagonist, though she is very hard on herself for some of the things she did when she was trying to save Dauntless in the first book and it is hard to see her tear herself down that way when her decisions were understandable in the circumstances. She makes a good pair with Four, also from Dauntless, who is now her boyfriend. Solid book, well worth reading.

BOOK REVIEW: Divergent by Veronica Roth

written by David Steffen

Divergent is a 2011 dystopic science fiction novel by Veronica Roth, the first of a trilogy of books. The story takes place in an isolated city-state that used to be Chicago in the future, where it is walled off from the rest of the world where no one seems to know what is happening outside of it. Almost all of society is split into five factions, each of which values certain human traits above all others. At the age of sixteen, every person must decide which faction they will belong to for the rest of their lives or risk falling into the huddled masses of the factionless who are barely acknowledged by the society.

The Abnegation values selflessness, and expect its members to never think of themselves. Dauntless values courage, its members are like a trained military force, expected to take on dangerous challenges without hesitation. Candor values honesty, and its members are expected to always tell the truth in all situations. Amity values harmony, and wants everyone to get along peacefully. Erudite value intelligence, they’re the inventors of the society. Every person is expected to be a clear fit for one of the factions or they are an outcast, but there are whispers that some people are “divergent” who have tendencies toward several factions at once, these people are considered dangerous to their social order.

Beatrice Prior is born and raised as Abnegation, but although she sees the worth in Abnegation’s values, she feels like an impostor because she can’t seem to hold to those values. On her Choosing Day she has to choose between staying with her family in Abnegation or leaving them behind to join one of the other factions.

The basis of this society is ludicrous (but of course it is a dystopia, not a proposal for a new social order, so I’m not saying it’s a bad idea for a book!). The people in this society have been raised with these ideals since birth so they take them for granted. It can be a difficult task for an author to build this world in a way that the reader can understand it without killing the pacing with an infodump, but this book does a very nice job of it, letting us see what it’s like to live in Abnegation day to day, then meet members of other factions and see how their behavior is different, Beatrice goes through the testing to see her faction leanings and etc.

If there is value in such a segregated society, the worst part of it is that you have to choose for life at the age of sixteen with very little information. People change! What if someone is very like Erudite as a teenager, but tends more toward Amity as they age? Well, too bad, you can either stick with your faction or you can go starve in the factionless.

Beatrice is in her head a lot, examining each angle of the situation, so I related to that a lot, as I am always examining every angle of situation before I make a choice about it, whenever I can. There are a lot of strong conflicts between Beatrice and the other initiates who have just chosen their new faction as they compete with each for entry. The book is full of action and worldbuilding and well written, a great start to a trilogy.

TV REVIEW: Tales From the Loop Season 1

written by David Steffen

Tales From the Loop is a science fiction series with a montage cast that premiered on Amazon Prime in April 2020, based on illustrations from the narrative art book of the same name by Simon Stalenhag.

Underneath a small coastal town scientists have built The Loop, an experimental facility intended to unlike scientific secrets of all of the world’s mysteries. Everyone knows The Loop is there, but very few people know much about it at all. But there are a lot of things that are odd about this small town, lots of little residues, side effects of the experiments.

While many of the cast members recur from episode to episode, each episode focuses on a different person or people encountering a different mystery, often some unforeseen side effect of some forgotten relic of technology cast off by the experimental facility. The first episode follows a young girl as she tries to find out more about what her mother who works at The Loop does for a living, and she is pulled into the strangeness for herself. Quite a few of the episodes deal with the subject of time in one way or another, from manipulating time, to the passage of time as we age.

This is a really beautiful and well built series. There are so many striking images, so many great moments. In many ways it feels like the best parts of The Twilight Zone, where someone encounters something strange episodically and you never quite know how it’s going to turn out, but here all of these characters become familiar because even though each encounter their own strangeness their lives all interlock with each other, and the consequences from previous episodes still matter and affect the outcome.

One of the episodes in particular I found extremely powerful, episode five: “Control” where a man does the best he can to protect his family from the unknown. It’s a powerful story about the sometimes foolish things we can do when we are afraid for our family.

It’s hard to say very much about the series since each episode is mostly pretty well contained within itself, without spoiling something. But we very much enjoyed it, and if they make a season 2 we will definitely be watching!

BOOK REVIEW: Corporate Gunslinger by Doug Engstrom

written by David Steffen

Corporate Gunslinger is a science fiction action/drama novel by Doug Engstrom premiering this week with Harper Voyager. Full disclosure: Doug has been a friend for years and is a member of the same small writing group as me, this review was based on an advanced reader copy from the publisher.

Kira is deeply in debt, so deeply that she has decided to sign a contract to become a gunslinger who settles disputes for a major corporation by representing them in good-old-fashioned gun duel (albeit with science fictional tweaks to the format). The story takes place in a sadly-plausible future United States where this is the norm. She must fulfill her contract to make enough money to have a chance of paying off her debt. The alternative is worse: lifelong debt slavery enforced by a chip that makes sure she is always under their control.

Kira is not the fastest, nor the most accurate, but she is working hard to get better at both, and her background gives her an edge that others don’t have. She was a theater major hoping to make it big and she intends to use this the best she can to better understand her opponents and convey the persona she wishes to convey. If she wants to stay alive and in control of her own life she has to find a way to win matches and live with herself afterward.

This story is dark and not for the light-hearted, but I think that it is a glimpse at a future we would better avoid. Kira is a relatable protagonist though she is pressed into doing terrible things on behalf of her corporate employer to save herself. It is no lighthearted book but it is compelling and Kira is easy to root for in her seemingly impossible situation. I quite enjoyed it and am happy to recommend it.

Corporate Gunslinger’s official release date is June 16, 2020. I hope you check it out!

DP FICTION #62B: “On You and Your Husband’s Appointment at the Reverse-Crematorium” by Bill Ferris

You place the urn carefully onto the examination table. The doctor opens the lid, takes a peek inside, sniffs a little. He nods, like he’s evaluating a new blend of coffee, then dumps half of your husband’s cremains into a big metal mixing bowl, the kind they had in the restaurant kitchen you used to work at. He uses a large copper whisk to mix in a bottle of purified water.

Your eyes scan the renovated warehouse where the doctor has set up shop, which doubles as a Pilates studio at night. You ask how many times he’s done this before.

The doctor stops whisking and cracks open a soda can. He says he’s performed this procedure literally dozens of times. Several droplets of Diet Mountain Dew splash into the mixing bowl, but the doctor appears unconcerned. You look for reassurance in the form of laboratory equipment, all of which looks state of the art, judging by the assortment of alembics, vials, and tubes on his table, and the size of the 3D printer, which has been whirring since you arrived, churning out a neon-orange human skull. (The Pontius Pilates T-shirts sold at the front desk also appear to be tastefully designed and a flattering fit.) The doctor resumes whisking, mixing in three cups of plaster of Paris and most of an already-open box of baking soda from the break-room refrigerator. He adds the last of the cremains to the cremixture. With each stroke of the whisk he counts aloud, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. You don’t want to over-beat the batter, he says.

The 3D printer stops, and the doctor remarks on its perfect timing. The skull is the last piece of your husband’s new skeleton. He picks up the skull and examines it like Hamlet pitying Yorick. Think fast, he commands, tossing you the skull. You drop your keys to the table as you grab for the plastic skull. You bobble it, but manage to clamp your hands around it before it hits the floor. The doctor laughs—what fun! You nod as your blood pressure de-escalates out of hypertension. You carefully hand your husband’s skull back to him as he makes the “gimmie-gimmie” gesture. He then wheels a gurney out from behind a curtain, upon which rests a plastic skeleton rendered in lemon yellow, except for the collarbone and left shoulder blade. He had run out of the yellow resin, the doctor says, and used the next closest color to finish up. The hues clash, but God willing, you’ll never see your husband’s candy-corn-colored skeleton again anyway.

He jams the skull onto the spine in a manner resembling, both in physical strain and amount of cursing, the time your husband replaced the front axle of the Hyundai. A loud click makes you think his plastic spine has snapped, but the rapidity with which the doctor extends his hand toward you for a fist bump suggests the skeleton is officially ship-shape.

The doctor startles, realizing he almost forgot an important step. It’s the third important step he’s almost forgotten, but who’s counting? You hand him the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone that will serve as your husband’s new brain, which will regulate all bodily systems, including the Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine that will be his new heart. You were up all night loading photos of you and your husband, the honeymoon, the house, Max the doggo, and your vacation to Colorado that one time into the special Dropbox folder labeled “FRIENDLY_FILE.” You also sprung for Spotify Premium and loaded it with playlists of his favorite songs. And for good measure, you pirated Seasons 1-5 of Game of Thrones. The doctor snaps the brain into place, plugging the USB cable into the complex system of wires that snakes through and around the skeleton. Several times he pauses and rewinds a YouTube tutorial on how to wire a drone helicopter to make sure he’s got things right. The doctor sees you looking and reassures you that he’s done this literally dozens of times.

Now it’s time to add the chicken wire. Wrapping it around the bones like he’s taping a sprained ankle, he explains the wire mesh gives the new flesh something to grab onto, like patching a hole in drywall. Most importantly, it functions as a cage for the skeleton. Did you know we’ve all got a spooky skeleton trapped inside us that wants to escape? You point out that this skeleton is plastic. The doctor shakes his head–a well-made skeleton knows it’s a skeleton, ready to burst out of at the first sign of weakness. You can find no fault in his logic; they can do amazing things with 3D printers these days.

The doctor secures the chicken wire with a bag of zip ties from Home Depot. He then grabs a drywall knife and scoops a big pile of the cremains mixture onto the wire-encased right shin. He mentions his patent-pending skin formula is completely full-moon proof. You ask what happens on a full moon. The doctor beams—NOTHING, thanks to his secret formula! His hunched-over posture of concentration reminds you of the tattoo artist when you and hubby got matching pinup girls with the word “LOVE” inscribed underneath. The doctor draws several occult-looking symbols onto your husband’s chest with a chopstick you’re not sure is unused. You decide not to remind him of his promise to re-create the tattoo.

By the by, the doctor wants to know how your husband will be spending his time once he comes back to life. There’s lots of red tape about reasons for reanimating a loved one. For instance, valid reasons include appearing as a surprise witness at a murder trial, spending one last Christmas with the fam, or firing their loathsome successor at the family business. Activities such as acting as a human shield, digging their own grave, or being the patsy in an elaborate jewel heist are strictly verboten (though for jewel heists, the role of “the brains of the outfit” is acceptable). You respond that your husband is dead, isn’t that reason enough? You miss the conversations, the cuddles, the creature comforts of living with your best friend. You can’t cope with your husband’s death without him, and yes, you know how crazy that sounds. The doctor nods—moving on is a lot harder for the living than the dead.

The doctor positions several oscillating fans next to your husband, and invites you to join him outside for a smoke while the new flesh dries. You confide to the doctor that you feel like you should stay there with your once-and-future husband, but part of you doesn’t want to be alone with this mound of corpse batter. He says that’s a perfectly natural response. Also, could he bum a smoke from you?

The mixture has dried, and the doctor tells you—and these are his words—it’s time to turn and burn, baby. Or perhaps he was talking to your husband, and you’re not sure which makes you more uncomfortable. He grabs a series of electrodes connected to a thing, licking each one like it’s a postage stamp, and attaches them to your husband’s new flesh. The doctor dons a pair of heavy rubber gloves, a welding mask, and a lead vest. He then hands you a pair of safety glasses you wouldn’t trust if you were making a homemade birdhouse. When he tells you to stand back, you backpedal behind a reinforced shield wall at a velocity that will leave your muscles sore for two days.

Before he throws the master switch—one of those oversized red buttons labeled “easy” they sell at Staples for six bucks—the doctor rattles off the safety concerns you’d already learned from his website, but which he’s required by law to mention again. For example, your husband will go out looking for those responsible for his death. You reply that he was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident. The doctor winks and points at your husband. He knows who did it. Oh-ho-ho-ho, he knows.

The doctor asks if you have pets. You mention your corgi, Max, whom the doctor advises you to give away. When you protest, the doctor purses his lips and puts a hand on your shoulder. In his gentlest voice he tells you that, two weeks from now, one way or another, the dog won’t be living with you. This information was not on the website, and you mention, rather forcefully, that Max had been your husband’s dog and without him you couldn’t have held it together, and it would’ve been good to know he couldn’t stay before you started this process. The doctor thanks you for this constructive criticism. You ask the doctor if anybody loves him enough to reanimate him after you strangle him to death. He laughs and says yes, his credit card company. You don’t know what to say to that.

The doctor asks if you have any final questions. Just one, the one you’ve been dreading, the one about which the website was very vague—will your husband still be capable of love? The doctor’s face contorts to one of revulsion as he tells you no. You only meant to ask whether your husband could still feel love as an emotion. He chuckles, relieved, saying the answer to that is also no. All his favorite sports teams? Hubby hates them now. He will harbor a deep, unspoken resentment toward all living creatures, and you especially. Maybe it’s because you disturbed his rest, or you dragged him away from Heaven, or who knows what. Your husband won’t really know, either. He’ll probably lash out at you. He might say something passive-aggressive while watching TV. He may lift the car over his head and hurl it at you. He might start a petty argument for no good reason. This is all perfectly normal and expected. While you will be legally responsible for him, he still has his own will and desires, and he’ll want more out of his new life than reliving his old one; the dead are, by necessity, better at moving on than the living.

The doctor asks if you still want to go through with this. His face shows none of the mirth he’d exhibited up to that point. You pause, contemplating how easily you could tell your friends the doctor turned out to be a flake. You could walk away and keep your dog with nothing lost but your deposit. Well, that and the idea of seeing your beloved’s face again. And he would still be your beloved, no matter what the doctor said. You give the final okay.

The doctor presses the button. You’re half-expecting lightning to course into your husband’s new body, for him to let out a monstrous growl as raw animal life surges into the waiting vessel. What actually happens is much less dramatic, more like a vibrating massage chair; you hear the muffled ringtone of your husband’s Samsung brain, like when your iPhone slides between the couch cushions.

It takes a minute or so for your husband to boot up. The skin starts to move, then all at once, it sucks inward like a vacuum sealer, forming the contours of your husband’s face.

He rises. The doctor had warned you about the eerie red light that now pours from your husband’s empty eye sockets, but you can’t really prepare yourself for the first time you see a living, breathing monster. The doctor corrects you—the scientific term is “abomination before God,” which his lawyer has assured him is very different, legally speaking.

Your husband looks at you. You go weak in the knees—his loving gaze always made your knees weak, but this is different. He opens his mouth, and the light pours forth from there as well. Oh, God, it’s weird. His voice sounds delayed, like he’s speaking to you via satellite from somewhere far, far away. OH HEY. I MUST’VE. DRIFTED OFF FOR A. BIT. But at bottom, it’s his voice, and you throw your arms around him. He freezes. The light inside him intensifies, redder and redder, so bright you can hear it. He puts his arms around you. For a moment, you think (hope?) he might crush you, but he does not. He pats you on the back a couple times.

Tears overflow from your eyes. You want to kiss him, but you don’t dare, lest that red light enter your body. You just tell him how much you love him and how you’ve missed him and you can’t believe he’s back, and so on.

The terrible red light now glows through his flesh. DID YOU. WATCH GAME. OF THRONES WITHOUT. ME?

You shake your head and wipe the tears away. You were waiting for him.

He shrugs and the light subsides. WHATEVER YOU. WANT, BABE.

You scoff at the doctor’s notion that the dead are better at moving on than the living: you’ve moved on from the very concept of moving on. You forget about the life you may have had as a family of one. You forget about the dog, for what living creature can compete with nostalgia in (mostly) human form? You can sit on the couch with your sweetie again, or a reasonable approximation thereof. The doctor was right, it’s the little creature comforts that make life worth living, as long as you don’t think about it too hard.

During your reverie, your husband had started to strangle the doctor. You put your hand on your husband’s shoulder, and at your touch he releases his grip. The doctor gives you a thumbs-up to show he’s okay, this happens all the time.

You smile at your husband. It’s time to go home.

Bill Ferris writes mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. He has published several short stories in literary journals, and writes an advice column at Writer Unboxed designed to help dilettantes and hacks learn nothing whatsoever. When he’s not typing words into a thing, Bill develops online courses at an organization his lawyer advised him not to name. He has two sons who asked not to be mentioned in this bio, but Elliott and Wyatt forgot to say “please.”

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DP FICTION #60A: “Invasion of the Water Towers” by R.D. Landau

The water towers never showed up on film. That should have been a sign. In the before times, there were water towers on every rooftop. They were highly visible, distinct from the rest of the landscape, cylindrical bodies with conical heads and long spindly legs. Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy whining about work and finding the perfect brand of deodorant and wondering if that cute barista was flirting with us (They weren’t. It is literally their job to smile and draw hearts in foam and have perfect hair. We as a society need to get over ourselves) we would have asked ourselves why the water towers didn’t want us to see them represented in the movies. Maybe if we hadn’t sharpened those not-thinking skills by not thinking about global warming and drone strikes and the asbestos in the ceiling that coated our hair like dandruff, we would have asked the right questions before it was too late.

Three days before the invasion, my barista, Zed (not the barista I mentioned earlier, that was a hypothetical barista and anyways, their eyes are way too green, like who has eyes that green, it’s obviously colored contact lenses and I could never date someone who puts colored pieces of plastic in front of their eyes) said, “I think the water tower on my building moved last night.”

“Oh really?” I said, my pulse beating at a normal tempo for a pulse to beat.

On the day of the invasion, I was waiting for Zed to turn around so I could put milk and sugar in my coffee, when the radio cut off the Inoffensive Station suddenly: “We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast to report that the water towers are moving. We do not know what they are, where they came from or what their intentions may be. All citizens of New York and New Jersey are required to stay indoors.”

We all checked Twitter, desperate for more news, but the water towers had destroyed the internet. Stripped of our dignity and our Wi-Fi, we sipped in stunned silence until Zed said, “free drinks for anyone who helps barricade the doors,” in a voice so confident and commanding and melodious and mellifluous and pleasing, that everyone obeyed instantly. We hauled tables and chairs and sacks of beans against the door.

Then a water tower shuffled past. I could see its long spindly legs through the advertisements for Basilisk Frappuccino that covered the window. Zed held a chair out legs first as a weapon. The other barista thrust a customer in front of him as a shield. I did… something badass and heroic. But the water tower passed us by, paying no attention. Afterwards, everyone sat on the floor drinking caffeine because what we really needed during an alien invasion was a faster heart rate.

“I thank you, fine purveyor of caffeine,” I told Zed, who was leaning on the counter, exhausted.

“Thanks,” said Zed with a tired smile that did not make me imagine massaging their shoulder blades while they lay naked in a bed of coffee grounds.

After the water towers seized control of the banks, the city government and the bagel shops in that order (according to the radio which might have been controlled by the water towers), after we huddled in the Starbucks for 72 hours, living off soymilk and increasingly stale lemon poppy seed muffins, after we cried and wet our pants and said our prayers (we meaning everyone but me – my pants and eyes stayed dry), after we gave up hope of seeing our families or our friends or our safety-code-violating apartments ever again, we ran out of food. Various solutions were proposed: cannibalism, shoe-eating, waiting for the government to save us. While we voted, the other barista chewed on an elderly customer’s hair.

“STOP,” said Zed, in a booming voice like a sexy sea captain. “It’s way too early to turn to cannibalism.”

“Hair is dead cells,” said the other barista. “So it isn’t technically cannibalism.”

“We have to go out and get food,” said Zed.

The (probably-water-tower-controlled) radio had warned us that if we went outside, we would be captured by the water towers. Rumor had it that the water towers drank their prisoners. So everyone avoided eye contact with the same intensity as when an accordion player asks for money on the subway (everyone including me.)

Zed sighed. “I’ll go alone then.” They removed the barricades, while the rest of us huddled in a pile on the opposite corner. They opened the door.

A water tower crawled in, then a second, then a third.

“We have come for the coffee,” said the water tower.

Zed brandished the blade of a dismantled coffee grinder. “We can’t let them take our coffee! Who’s with me?”

No one said anything.

The three water towers surrounded Zed, sloshing angrily. “You will make us coffee, or you will be eliminated.”

Zed was beautiful and flawless and perfect in every way but they were only a barista. What good is a barista against a water tower?

“What can I get for you?” said Zed.

R.D. Landau recently fled New York. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Heavy Feather Review and tl;dr among others. Her hobbies include watching musicals, making truffles and hiding under the bed.

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DP FICTION #58B: “The Problem From Jamaica Plain” by Marie L. Vibbert

I was waiting for the teakettle to boil, and the office wasn’t due to open for, oh let’s say three minutes. The phone blinked and I considered not answering, what with those three minutes of leisure ahead of me, but I needed every client I could get. I put on my phone voice and chirped, “Jasmine Alexa, Attorney at law.”

The voice on the other end trembled with fear and flat, Bostonian vowels. “I’m not shuh, but Ah think I might have killed someone.”

That was as good as a shot of straight caffeine. “Excuse me? Wait… right now?”

There was an unsettling long pause. “No?” It was a woman’s voice, rough and deep, but definitely feminine.

You are no doubt thinking exactly what I was thinking at this point: This person is a murderer. After years of handling divorces and wills, I was suddenly transported into an episode of Law and Order: Special Weird Calls Unit.

Before my brain could decide if murderers paid well, my mouth said, “I’m sorry, this is a civil law office. I don’t do criminal cases.”

“Crap. Wrong number.” She hung up.

I stared at my phone. Should I call the police? Report the call? The number? The time? I was still writing down the digits when my phone lit up again. The same number. I let it ring once, but oh, I was too curious to let it go to voicemail.

“Jasmine Alexa.”

“Yeah, you said you were a lawyah?”

I propped the phone on my shoulder and wrote down the rest of the phone number, and the times for both calls. “Civil law,” I said.

“I wanna ask you about a custody problem.”

I set my pencil down. “What about the person you might have killed?”

A pause. “Aw, I don’t need a lawyer for that. So, uh… lemme ask you, and does it cost money just to ask? What happens if someone leaves a baby on your doorstep, say like in the movies, in a basket with a note and all that? Is that your baby?”

“Uh… no. You’re under no legal obligation, but you should call the authorities. The police will try to find whoever abandoned it. If the baby ends up a ward of the state, you’ll have to apply for adoption the same as anyone.”

“Thanks,” she said, and hung up.

What the hell?

This time I called her. She answered the phone with, “This is Elle.”

“This is Alexa. Did someone leave a baby on your doorstep?”

Elle sighed, long and heavy. “I guess ya better come over.”

The teakettle whistled. I looked at my note for the police. I picked up my car keys. You don’t go into business for yourself as a lawyer unless you’re more curious than smart.

Elle’s apartment was a walkup above a consignment shop, so the story about doorsteps was probably fabrication.

From her accent on the phone I expected a husky white woman with a cigarette permanently attached to her lip. Elle was skinny and very, very black. Almost blue. Never assume. Elle had a short afro pushed back by a yellow daisy headband, bright pink lipstick and a yellow shift dress. Glam.

Her deep voice sounded warmer than on the phone. “My girlfriend Veronica and I were arguing. Nothing serious! It got maybe a little heated, and she fell.” Elle backed into the apartment, twisting the hem of her dress between nervous fingers. “I mean… I pushed her,” she said, like a caught-out child. “But it wasn’t that hahd, I didn’t even expect her to fall but… anyway, that’s what’s left.” She lifted her chin to the right.

This was the moment when I could turn around, head back down the rickety steps, and forget the whole thing. I closed my eyes as I turned, picturing splattered blood and gore. I opened my eyes.

An adorable baby, about six months old with Asian eyes and drool-wet lips, looked up at me from a pile of rumpled laundry.

Before I could censor myself, my mouth blurted out, “But where’s the body?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Elle groaned. She stomped over to just to the left of the baby. “I was here. Veronica was there.” She gestured at the air over the baby. “I pushed, she fell. She didn’t move or nothing. I got scared. You were the first lawyer in the phone book. Then while we were talking, she just…” Elle waggled her fingers in the air. “Melted or something. So I’m looking at this pile of her clothes, and that – that kid crawls out!” Fat tears spilled down her cheeks. “Did I kill Veronica? Did I make her a baby? Gawd, I never even step on bugs. She just… I just…”

“This is not the sort of problem I’m trained to deal with,” I said. Understatement of the Month.

Elle walked around the baby, reaching out like she was afraid to touch it or to let it crawl away. “So what do I… do I call the cops? What if that’s not a baby?” She bit her lower lip. “What if this is Veronica?”

“I’m not following.”

Elle squatted down, peering at the baby, who stared back with an adorable “oo” expression. “It… it kinda looks like Veronica. I’m afraid to pick it up and check its parts to see if it’s a girl.”

“However it got here,” I said, “you are now the proud finder of a lost infant.”

“I should just treat it like that?” She looked at me like I was her mom and could solve all this for her.

I get that look a lot from potential clients. “Want me to call for you?”

Her skinny, anxious face bloomed into this relieved smile. “I’ll get ya some cake,” she said.

I didn’t believe Veronica was from Mars or whatever. I believed there was a logical, if odd, explanation. Elle produced a slice of cinnamon pound cake and a mug of Red Rose tea for me. She didn’t act like she’d recently had a head injury. The baby picked at Veronica’s discarded clothing with baby-like intense scrutiny. We made awkward small talk until the police came.

Elle paid me for my time, which was nice of her, and I wrote it all off as an unexplained mystery I’d enjoy telling at parties.

Not so lucky. Two days later, Child Protective Services called.

“Yeah, we got you as a witness to a foundling recovery in JP two nights ago?”

I knew right then it wasn’t going to be good. “What about it?”

“There’s a problem.”

“Did you find the birth mother?”

“Lady, you have got to be kidding me.”

“I… really am not kidding you. What’s the problem?”

“Your ‘foundling’ is a teen and asking for her lawyer.”

“I’m not…”

“Yeah, well, her much older girlfriend says you’re their lawyer, so you better come down here and talk to your client because she ain’t in the system and we aren’t in the habit of letting kids walk out of here without a legal guardian.”

I took one longing look at my lunch – fresh pesto on shells from the market up the street – and sighed. “I’m on my way.”

Veronica Wong, if you believed that was her name, was a coltish teen with shaggy, short hair. She wore oversized sweats and sprawled on the sofa in the front parlor of the Forbes Home for Wayward Youth.

In my briefcase I had a Xerox of Veronica Wong’s Massachusetts driver’s license proclaiming her to be twenty-five and a resident of Jamaica Plain. The photo was uncannily similar, but older, with longer hair.

“You’re sure this is the kid you brought in?” I asked the social worker.

She was a thickset black woman and she looked about one second away from flipping out. The whites showed all the way around her irises. “We get a lot of kids in and out,” she said, “but we tend to notice if one grows five years every night.”

Veronica blew a tuft of hair out of her face. “I want my lawyer,” she said.

The social worker asked, “You want to back out?” She asked it like she was asking if I wanted to stab her in the back.

I stepped forward, hand out. “Veronica? I’m Jasmine Alexa. We… may have met at your apartment, when you were…?” I stopped myself short of saying “destroyed and reformed as a baby.” It’s bad to assume things.

Veronica gave me a quick once-over. “Elle trusts you,” she said. “Is she still mad?”

I retracted my hand. “I don’t know what you were fighting about.”

Veronica rolled her eyes. “She thinks I’ve changed. Like I’m not the same person. She’s the one who changed! I’m me. I’ll always be me.”

“Well, right now that’s not as important as the question of your custody. You are… you appear to be a minor.”

“I know that. I’m adolescent, not stupid.” Veronica sank deeper into the couch, her legs spread wide. “They wouldn’t even let me see Elle until an hour ago. Tell Elle to stop freaking out and I’ll come home. And tell her I’m not going to replace her in her sleep! Jeeeeez. Why do people always think that about us, huh? We don’t go replacing any old person just to do it.”

I looked to the social worker for some help. She held her hands up and backed out of the room.

I sat down. “Right, so if you agree to have me represent you, I can hold anything we talk about in confidence. If your legal guardian—”

“I’m not an orphan. I told them, my parents live on Long Island.”

“Yes,” I said. I opened the file CPS had given me. “And those parents are a little confused how their college graduate daughter ended up in a home for minors.”

Veronica examined the ceiling through her bangs. “This sucks,” she said.

“Well, what do you expect me to do about it?” It wasn’t the tone I usually take with my clients, but this was getting unreal.

“Can’t you get them to release me into Elle’s custody? What if my folks wrote a note?”

“You can’t get Herbert and Julia Wong to come fetch you, why would they write you a note?”

Veronica flicked a hand dismissively. “They just hate taking the expressway.”

“I don’t think you understand: your claimed parents are officially denying you.”

She looked wrecked. After a long minute staring at her own sneaker digging holes in the carpet, she said, “Yeah, I guess they would.”

“Veronica, are Mr. and Mrs. Wong really your parents?”

Morosely, to her feet, she said, “I’ll be twenty-five in a couple more days and it’ll all smooth out. Guess I just gotta wait.”

“I’m not sure this will smooth itself out. I think we’re about five minutes away from black helicopters coming in to take you away.”

She half-grinned. “Guess I really need a lawyer, then.”

“My first question, as your lawyer, is: are you going to persist in being Veronica Wong? Even if everyone who knows Veronica Wong denies you?”

Hands clasped between her knees, every inch a vulnerable teen, she said, “I don’t know how to be anyone else.”

“Okay. Okay, so, Veronica, um… was there an original, other Veronica I should be concerned about?”

She rolled her eyes, and in almost exactly the inflection of Elle, but with a distinct Long Island lockjaw, said, “I don’t need a lawyer for that.”

The social worker stopped me with a hand on my chest as I tried to leave the building. “Look, we processed her as an infant two days ago. We got the paperwork all in place – we had adoption people breathing down our necks – but suddenly she was too old to be a newborn. Had to re-process as a toddler. The hospital bracelet had to come off. Three times. That’s a re-admit, full paperwork. Then there were the vaccination questions at each age landmark. You want to explain to the state why you can’t vaccinate a five year old because it hasn’t been twenty-four hours since their two-year-old vaccinations? I’m losing my marbles and no one is helping. District, City won’t touch her with a forty-foot pole. We don’t have procedures for this. The fourth time they asked me to re-do the paperwork, I put her in as school-age, which incidentally is loads worse with extra considerations, but I figured if we jumped a few years ahead we’d be in the clear. We are NOT in the clear.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that, regardless of what CPS is saying right now, she’s going to look eighteen soon enough and I’d really like to release an eighteen year-old into her lawyer’s custody. We’ll say she aged out of the system. It won’t be a lie.”

I didn’t think adults could get their eyes that round and puppy-like. “This is asking a lot.”

“You’re a civil lawyer. I’ll owe you a favor and I’m sure you’ll be back to collect before too long. You do divorces? Custody disputes?”

“Wouldn’t I love to,” I said.

Elle stood at the base of the stairs up to her apartment, arms crossed tight across her chest. “I don’t want her in here.”

“She lives here,” I said.

“That isn’t Veronica. I don’t know what that is, but it is not my girlfriend!”

Veronica groaned. “I’ve been Veronica as long as you’ve known me.”

“And how do I know that?”

It was drizzling – that soft, fuzzy drizzle that you hardly notice but that soaks you through after a while. “Look,” I said, “I got her out of official custody, but I’m not taking her home like an abandoned kitten. My landlord would kill me. Veronica has to live somewhere.”

“Veronica does,” Elle said, lifting her chin.

I said, “You’re accusing your girlfriend of being an illegal alien and identity thief. That involves contacting Immigration. That involves criminal charges. I’d be required to report that to the police. If they arrest her and can’t find a record of her citizenship, what do you think will happen?”

Elle took a step back, into the shelter of the covered stair. “I don’t want anybody deported, but come on – she’s a damned pod person! Or, or that thing from that movie in the Artic with the dogs and whatshisname. That… what was that thing called?”

“The Thing,” I provided. “Veronica, you can weigh in on this at any time.”

Veronica stepped forward, chin down, hands clasped before her. “I’m the same girl you met on the red line, Elle.”

“Your folks don’t say that. Your folks are more pissed than I am.”

Veronica’s contrite posture evaporated. She balled her fists on her hips. “You’ve been talking to my folks behind my back again?”

I said, “Can we please have this argument indoors?”

Elle gave in. She kept shooting glares at Veronica, but she let us follow her up into the apartment.

“Have a seat,” she gestured at the couch.

“I’m not a guest. I live here,” Veronica said. “I bought that couch.”

“A pod person bought my couch,” Elle said, disgusted.

Veronica started crying, helpless, wracking sobs, standing there in the middle of the room.

It was an ugly couch: tomato-soup red tweed. I charitably assigned the disgust and the tears to it. I said, “Veronica, she’s not trying to hurt you; she really wants to know who you are. Elle, she’s trying to tell you who she is. Be patient and listen. If she was going to melt your brain and use it to destroy the Earth, I think maybe she’d have done it by now.”

Elle frowned hard, but she turned to look at Veronica. “Who are you?”

Veronica sat down on the couch. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m not the original Veronica Wong, but it’s not like I killed her. My parents – my real parents, my pod parents – put an ad on Craigslist, looking for someone who would want to trade identities, get away. Veronica answered, and they sent her my pod.” Veronica shrugged. “That’s the way we do it. The real Veronica put my pod on her bed and slept next to it for a week, until I formed. Like I’m re-forming now. We grow to adulthood fast, then we age normal. So I… I will look a few years younger now. Because I kinda got re-set. It’s my stem, see… we’re like plants?” Turning to me, she said, “The real Veronica is in Nevada, driving a truck. We keep in touch on Instagram. You never met her. I mean… she’s not me. She’s straight, and she likes pro wrestling.” Veronica wrinkled her nose.

“I’m relieved I won’t have to recommend you a criminal lawyer for her murder.” I reconsidered my Understatement of the Month.

There was an awkward pause. I found myself listening for black ops helicopters. Perhaps, in the real world, there’s no funding for Mulder and Scully.

Elle squinted. “Wait. But how old was Veronica when you took her place? If she, like, consented and all? She can’t have been younger than… how old are you?”

“It was seven years ago, but…”

“Holy crap!”

“…but that’s like thirty in human years! Come on! I’m a pod person, remember? You see how fast I grow back. Oh, and thanks for killing me, by the way.”

Elle’s lips trembled, her eyebrows canted high. “I… I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Well, you did. And now you know what happens when you break my plant stem. It gets weak in the winter and I don’t move backwards so good, and then you stepped on my toe and SNAP. Do you know how much it sucks being a baby again?”

“But… seven? V, I can’t date some child!”

“In pod years. Jeez, it’s not like I had to spend a whole year growing up! Figure year one is actually eighteen years, development-wise.”

I raised my hand and held it in the air until they remembered they had an audience. “So,” I said, “to recap: Veronica is a pod person who replaced another girl who was over the age of consent. None of us have ever met Veronica the First, and she is not a party in this dispute. Elle did not know of Veronica’s non-human nature, a fight broke out, and, if I’m hearing this correctly – Elle, you actually did kill someone that morning when you called me?”

“Aw gawd,” Elle said, and fell down on the couch next to Veronica, twisting her fingers together.

“Not, like, permanently,” Veronica said. She reached out like she wanted to put her arm around Elle but wasn’t sure it would be accepted. “Didn’t even hurt all that much. I was just… startled. And a baby.”

“I didn’t… I don’t wanna be that kind of girlfriend,” Elle sniffled. Now they were both wet-faced.

I said, “Do we need to do something about this? We’re talking about deadly assault.”

Veronica gestured wide. “I’m not pressing charges or anything. Elle didn’t know I’m more fragile than a normal human.”

“I’m so sorry!” Elle threw her arms around Veronica. They hugged each other tight, sobbing together. “I’ll never walk again if it means not stepping on your adorable little toes. Oh gawd!”

“No, Elle. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, about your mother.”

“She is a bitch. Oh, honey. I shouldn’t have let her pressure you.”

“No, no, she’s right. I mean… it’s been four years. Maybe we are taking things too slow.”

I was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel, but I still had some things to clear up. “So, if you don’t mind, I’ll charge this as a one-hour consult?”

They looked up like they were shocked to remember I was still there.

Elle sniffled, and grasped my hand. “Thank you, Ms. Alexa. Really. I don’t know how we’ll ever pay you back.”

I said, “Consider getting a prenuptial agreement and filing power of attorney writs. You never know what will happen.”

Elle quickly said, “Oh, no… I mean, I asked, but she…”

Veronica pulled her girlfriend back and looked her in the eyes. “Yes,” Veronica said.

Elle said, “Oh sweetie, no, you’re all emotional and with all this…”

“Shut up, Elle. I’m saying ‘yes,’ and you can’t take it back now.” She glared sternly at her girlfriend, who melted – in the normal, romantic sense.

They kissed, and I saw myself out. When I got back to the office, I sent them my standard prenup packet and a note to pass my name along to anyone who needed special legal attention as a pod-American. There were identity theft issues, legal status, citizenship – gallons of delicious, charge-by-the-hour paperwork.

I think those two crazy kids – and my business – are going to make it.

Author’s Note: My friend Alexandra, a lawyer, related to me a puzzling wrong number she’d received. The first phone call is verbatim from her memory. I found myself trying to come up with an interested reason why this person wasn’t sure if they’d killed someone. Then I decided to set it in Boston because, well, I hadn’t set anything in Boston yet, and two of my Clarionmates were living there at the time. Shout out to Christian and Thom!

Marie Vibbert’s writing has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s and F&SF, among other places. She is a computer programmer and played tackle football for the Cleveland Fusion for five years.

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DP FICTION #58A: “Consequences of a Statistical Approach Towards a Utilitarian Utopia: A Selection of Potential Outcomes” by Matt Dovey

Maximised Total Happiness

Michelle smiled, exhausted, as her baby’s cry filled the hospital room. The lights above her were harsh and cold, and the sheets beneath her were tangled and scratchy, soaked in her sweat and stinking of iodine, but none of that mattered against such a beautiful sound. She heard it so rarely—just once a year.

“Congratulations, Mrs Bergeron,” said the midwife. “It’s a girl.”

“Oh, thank you so much! I’m ecstatic!” She looked over at Nathan, cradling baby Danielle face down in his strong arms. A Happiness Moderator stood by them, uniformed with the usual black suit and easy smile; he lined up a large needle at the base of Danielle’s skull and implanted the HappyChip with a swift movement. Danielle’s cries quieted, then turned to a happy giggle.

“You should be very proud,” said the midwife, smiling. “What number is she?”

“My 22nd!”

“Well, congratulations again. I look forward to seeing you next year for number 23.”

Highest Possible Mode

Raj stepped into the kitchen and the welcoming arms of Alejandro. The air was heavy with spice and the sizzle of frying pork, the promise of a celebratory dinner as only Ali could prepare.

“I knew you could do it,” whispered Ali, embracing him. “Team manager!”

This, more than the promotion, was what made Raj happy: that he had made Ali proud. Falling in love with him had made everything click for Raj, and he understood, at last, what it meant to call someone your other half: not just a casual joke, but an honest statement that I am not me without them. Seeing Ali’s pride made him swell. It meant more than anything.

A firm knock sounded at the door, and Raj all but floated down the hallway to open it.

Pain flared in his toes. Raj crumpled, grasping at his right foot. He looked up; a Happiness Moderator stood in the doorway, already filling out his worksheet on a tablet. The Moderator had stamped on Raj’s foot as soon as the door had opened, breaking two, maybe three toes by the feel of it.

“Why?” gasped Raj.

The Moderator didn’t look up from his monitoring tablet. “Your level of happiness had risen to be equal to a large number of other citizens, but was nonetheless lower than the current societal mode. As such, your happiness threatened to establish a lower level as the new mode, undermining government targets.”

“Couldn’t you have given me some flowers or something? Made me even happier and lifted me above the others?”

“Sorry sir,” said the Moderator. “Pain is easier to invoke, and longer lasting. Have a happy day!

Highest Possible Mean

Roger cackled as he switched the traffic lights to red again, having let only three cars through the intersection. He was watching the drivers on an array of video monitors that glowed in the dim control room, displaying an orchestra of impatience rendered in drumming fingers and revving engines.

“Sir,” said a Happiness Moderator, stepping up to the desk. “Please be careful not to cause too much irritation. As soon as their combined frustration outweighs your delight…”

Roger looked up, a manic, almost hysterical grin on his face. He hadn’t had this much fun in years! Lights go green… lights go red! Pedestrians cross now… and again… and again! But not for too long—got to make them run once they’re halfway across! He laughed uproariously.

“Never mind, sir,” said the Moderator, stepping away.

Smallest Possible Standard Deviation

Cecile clicked the plastic lid onto the latte and passed it across the counter with a smile. The businesswoman smiled back with the same easy contentment and stepped away into the chatter of the airport, merging seamlessly into the efficient flow of foot traffic.

A cry went up from the arrivals line: Delphine! Oh Delphine! Two silver-haired women ran towards each other and embraced, clinging to each other with a frantic longing, their shoulders shaking as they sobbed on each other’s shoulder.

Cecile’s eyes welled up. She suddenly missed Nicole desperately, a huge hollow of longing opening up beneath her heart. It had been two months now, and Cecile still had no idea when the Venezuelan dig would be completed and Nicole would be home again, curled up on the sofa with Cecile under blankets and cushions and Henri the cat purring between them, a shared bottle of merlot by candlelight…

Happiness trickled across Cecile’s body like warm water, flowing out from the base of her skull, dampening her sadness and leaving it as an academic awareness of loneliness to be acknowledged with a smile. The two women in arrivals broke apart, arms dropping to their sides and broad grins smoothing down to gentle smiles. The same gentle smile as Cecile. The same gentle smile as everyone. Easily-maintained, easily-controlled, for everyone everywhere, always.

Highest Possible Median

Moderator Laidlow looked up from her monitoring tablet into the crying man’s puffy eyes. He stood in his doorway, dressed in a grey, ratty dressing gown, his hair unkempt and face unshaven. His bottom lip wobbled as he explained.

“Honestly, I’ll be fine again in a couple of hours. It’s just—my cat died overnight, and I might be a little down now, but I’m getting over it, I promise!”

He danced a sad little jig in the sour morning light as if to demonstrate, but he only made it four beats before sagging in defeat.

It wouldn’t have mattered. The tablet had already confirmed his status: he was the saddest person in the local area, with the least chance of improving above the median before the end of the day, judging by his current emotional trajectory.

She nodded at Moderator Rence, who reluctantly drew his HappyTaser. Laidlow had noticed his increasing reticence through their recent duties, though she struggled to understand it. She took great pride and satisfaction in her work; in knowing that she was improving society. Rence’s mood was completely at odds with her own approach to the work.

Without ceremony, he pressed the HappyTaser to the man’s forehead and executed him. He stood for a moment as the body crumpled, jerking slightly with the electric discharge, then slowly lifted the Taser and examined it.

“Do you ever wonder,” he said, “if what we do actually helps? Does it fix anything, or are we just papering over cracks? Does our work merely hide society’s ills behind an artificially inflated number, not only doing nothing to help directly but actively preventing greater self-examination of the true causes of our problems? Does the work not, in fact, burrow under your skin and eat away at you in the cold hours of the night, leaving you filled only with doubts and a raw, jagged uncertainty? Having walked out of the darkness of ignorance and come to find the truth beneath the façade, I do not know as I will ever be truly happy again.”

Laidlow said nothing. She swiped about on her monitoring tablet, looking for the next unhappiest person in the vicinity now that this job had been completed.

Moderator David Rence said the display.

She raised her HappyTaser to his temple and executed him.

Well! she thought, smiling. That was efficient! What an excellent day!

Author’s Note: I can’t recall precisely what triggered the combination of utilitarianism and statistics in my mind—just the general everyday mush that is my brain, one supposes—but I never expected anyone else to find it funny. There’s not much more to be said for it than that, perhaps, except perhaps it shows the absurdity of taking any system to its logical extreme without constraint. I wonder if that will ever occur to the free market adherents selling off all the public infrastructure in Britain. Special thanks must go to Ric Crossman (@SquidFromSpace) for his statistical consultancy, in particular pointing out a far more efficient method for maintaining the optimum median value, an idea that will surely make him a hero come the revolution.

Matt Dovey is very tall, very English, and most likely drinking a cup of tea right now. He once got too happy after finding a packet of Golden Crunch Creams at the back of the cupboard, and has a scar on his arm where the Moderators intervened. He now lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife & three children, and despite being a writer he still hasn’t found the right words to fully express the delight he finds in this wonderful arrangement. His surname rhymes with “Dopey” but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. He’s an associate editor at PodCastle, a member of Codex and Villa Diodati, and has fiction out and forthcoming all over the place, including all four Escape Artists podcasts, Flash Fiction Online and Daily SF. You can keep up with it all at mattdovey.com, or follow along on Twitter and Facebook both as @mattdoveywriter.

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GAME REVIEW: Xevious

written by David Steffen

Xevious is a 1983 vertical-scrolling top-down shooter arcade game published by Namco.

In the game you have two weapons: a laser that fires straight forward that can destroy air targets, and a bomb that fires forward suitable only for land-based targets. As you travel through the level, other flying ships are firing back, as well as ground-based turrets and tanks, reflective obstacles that can only be avoided, as well as boss fights.

I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Visuals
Quite good for the era! Much more detailed than some of its contemporaries.

Audio
Typical for the era.

Challenge
High.

Story
Not much story (typical of the era and format).

Session Time
Depends how good you are!

Playability
Simple, apart from it not being immediately obvious that ground forces CAN be destroyed (lasers fire over the top of them and it takes a little trial and error to figure out the bombs). Joystick for movement, and two fire buttons.

Replayability
Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.

Originality
It was a groundbreaking design of this type of its time, so any perceived lack of originality may be because you’ve played other games inspired by it..

Playtime
I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.

Overall
This is a fun shooter arcade game if you like classic shooter games this is a solid one from the era. If you want to play it now you can find it on some recent-ish game systems, such as Game Boy Advance on Amazon for $12.

DP FICTION #56B: “Save the God Damn Pandas” by Anaea Lay

My job? Purity shaming pandas. It’s great. You loom over a living, breathing, talking embodiment of the international fixation on world peace and you shout, “Why won’t you fuck, you lazy motherfucker?” And then you play them some porn.

Okay, it’s not actually like that.

At all.

Really, my job kind of sucks.

“You. Purity shame. Pandas?”

The dinner entrées have just arrived. There’s a real wax candle, with fire and everything, on the table. Tinny speakers are playing pretentious string music. Wine which came from some sort of grape a hippie read bedtime stories to every night through the long summer fills our glasses. And my date is judging me. Hard.

“Why would you do that?” she asks.

Her name is Samantha. She’s wearing a red dress which, if we were animals, would mean she wants to get laid. Maybe she did want to get laid, five minutes ago, when all she knew about me was that I ordered the wine made from happy grapes. Now that she knows what I am, I may not make it to dessert. I am in serious trouble. “We have to do something. They’re going extinct.”

She gapes at me. If I made that face, my mother would be all ‘Don’t do that, Jason, you look like a carp. Are you a carp?” I don’t know much about carp. My job is pandas. “Can’t you use artificial insemination or something?”

Because that’s better. The pandas won’t even fuck, but how do you think momma panda is going to feel when a few weeks after she has a weird close encounter with a zookeeper she finds out she’s in the family way. Shit like that is where alien abduction stories come from, but the minute a cuddly furball with good PR is involved, the public is all over it. “Some of us think that wouldn’t be the best for Fen Fen’s mental health.”

Samantha is not following.

“Gestation and the eventual cubs have better outcomes if the mother agreed to the act that led to the pregnancy. We’re pretty sure Fen Fen would get very depressed if we inseminated her. She’s basically said as much. So we’re counting on Lan Lan to work some panda seduction.”

I clearly should have brought worms to my date, because I spent the rest of the main course trying to pry conversation from a carp. And no, dessert did not happen.

It was hard enough to get those fuzzy fuckers to breed before they could talk. But some jackass had the bright idea that if we used these new neural implant things that had been developed for stroke patients, we could give panda bears the ability to speak and we could explain the gravity of their lack of gravidity. Also, they were hoping for insights into the deep wisdom of the panda, or something.

What they got was Lan Lan the fat ass complaining about the tenderness of the bamboo we feed him, and Fen Fen the would be career woman with a penchant for writing memoir. Meanwhile I, Jason Constans, the Breeding Encouragement Specialist assigned to the fat ass, am basically a glorified sex therapist turned pimp.

So yes, I spend most of my working hours wanting to punch a panda in the face. That is not unreasonable.

“Sorry, man,” Cory, my roommate and best bud from way back in our collegiate days, says when I collapsed on our couch. “Bad date?”

I give the universal primate grunt of utter defeat.

“Was it her, or you?”

“Lan fucking Lan. It’s not enough for that celibate bastard to take down his whole species. He’s wrecking my life, too.”

Cory hands me a beer as he plops down on the couch next to me. We’ve had that couch since our first place, senior year of college. It’s part of the family. “Just don’t tell them what you do. You don’t have to open with the pandas-not-fucking thing.”

“It’ll come out eventually and then I’ll have another Rachel. I can’t do another Rachel, man.” Broke my heart. We were engaged. I was living the dream, ready for the picket fence and 2.5 kids and all of it. But she just had to meet Lan Lan, and what kind of monster has daily access to those cute! adorable! overgrown raccoons and won’t hook his fiancée up with an interview? Ten minutes of conversation with Lan Lan, and I was one sad sack of a dumped Breeding Encouragement Specialist.

Actually, it’s unfair to raccoons to compare pandas to them. Raccoons are ambitious little fuckers, and they can sense light with their hands. That is bad ass. Fen Fen’s incisive memoir aside, pandas are useless.

Cory takes a swig from his beer. “They won’t all turn out to be Rachel.”

“I was with her for two years. I can’t waste two years again. I’m getting old. My biological clock is ticking. If they aren’t going to survive finding out they’re dating a panda pimp, I need to get them out of the way in a hurry and look for the one who will.”

“Michael liked that I live with a panda pimp.”

“Michael was a nutcase, as evidenced by his idiotic life choices, first in dating you, then in not dating you.” I glance at Cory to see how he’s taking the ribbing. It’s only been a couple weeks since he and Mike broke up, and I’m pretty sure we’re to the teasing and ragging on the ex stage, but I haven’t tested it out yet.

Cory rolls his eyes and punches me in the arm. I called it right.

“Maybe we should go out and look for dates. Right now. You’re getting old, too. We are on the road to becoming the dude version of platonic cat lady roommates.”

He grimaces. “There’s nothing wrong with cat ladies, and I’ve got work in the morning.”

I do, too, but I’m not looking forward to it.

The problem with pandas, aside from everything, is all that bamboo. They’re bears who eat grass. Bears. Eating woody grass. Think about that for a minute. It’s basically the same as if we decided to subsist entirely on popcorn and stuck to it so hard that after a few generations our gut bacteria went, “Okay, fine, I guess we’ll do something with this, but you’re never going to be happy about it,” and so we were tired, sleepy, useless fucks all the time. But damn if we don’t like popcorn so much that we’re not going to bother looking for anything else. Yum, popcorn.

Do not talk to me about the nobility and enlightenment implied by an essentially carnivorous species going vegan so hard they subsist on glorified grass. I don’t care how eloquently Fen Fen writes about it. That is shit. And I would know; I’ve scooped plenty of her shit in my time.

The day after Samantha’s aborted red dress, I do my zombie strut into the panda enclosure at my usual cheery dawn-o-clock in the morning, quadruple mocha caramel caffeine fest clutched in my hands. Everything is soft and quiet like things are when the sun hasn’t even bothered to crawl its ass out of bed yet. Lan Lan, the fuzzy mother fucker, is curled up in his custom designed rock cave built by some Swedish company that specializes in harmonizing Feng Shui principles with Scandinavian minimalism, all while authentically replicating nature. What that means is that the cave is made out of stones that were very precisely cut and fit together like an Ikea jigsaw castle, and somebody apologized to the rock the whole time they shaped it.

I’m still tetchy about the date with Samantha, so I don’t hesitate before firing up the projector and starting the day’s therapy right then and there. The enclosure is immediately transformed from a finely honed replica of perfectly balanced authentic nature, into an immersive theater experience. In this particular case, we’re immersed in a very authentic replica of Antarctic winter. The cave is overlaid with images of a wall of emperor penguins squinting against the wind and huddling together like the paragons of bad ass dedicated fatherhood they are.

Lan Lan opens one eye and harrumphs. “Bad date?”

“She wore red.”

“Then you should be more cheerful.”

“I would, except you ruined it again.”

“You could quit your job,” Lan Lan says. He’s said that before.

“Then I’d be the guy who walked away and let the glorious panda go extinct. That’s not going to win me any blushing brides, either.”

“You’re perverse.” Then he closes his eye and goes back to sleep. I’m tempted to have them install industrial fans so we can blast him with a fraction of the Antarctic winter. Or maybe we could give an emperor penguin the neuro-enhancement hardware we’d installed in Lan Lan and Fen Fen and let a real, dedicated member of a popular and thriving species talk some sense into our pig-headed mascots of peace.

I sip at my liquid confection, waiting for the sugar to hit and make me jittery, as I watch the movie. After twenty minutes we get to my favorite part, when the wind eases up and the sun breaks through. All the dads turn their tuxedo faces up and blink at the light. They look so god damned bewildered, like they’ve gotten into the groove of hellacious winter misery and had forgotten it was going to end. “Oh, right, spring! That’s a thing,” their beady little eyes say.

Then the penguin moms come swimming in from the ocean and waddle across the ice and dad gets his first meal in six months and falls over exhausted and they’ve got their little chick and it’s like the perfect triumph of the nuclear family on the world’s largest desert and the sugar finally hits which is the only reason my eyes got misty even though I’ve seen this movie something like five hundred times.

“Have you ever considered that I’m not the one who needs therapy?” Lan Lan asks, his voice rumbling through his chest because he doesn’t even bother to move his face from where he’s buried it in his paws. Parents would shit diamonds to let their kids see that pose this close. They deserve hemorrhoids.

“Do you see what they go through? And that’s just for one egg. You guys usually get twins out of the deal. Why is this so hard for you to get behind?”

“I’m not the family type. And neither is Fen Fen. There’s not enough penguin footage in the world to change that.”

“As far as we can tell, there isn’t a single member of your species who is the family type.”

“So we go extinct. Big fucking deal.” His butt waggles as he shifts to get more comfortable.

“You are the living, breathing embodiment of the symbol of peace. We can’t let that go extinct. What would that say about us?”

The long silence Lan Lan answers me with might be commentary if I didn’t know he was too lazy to work up the effort necessary to judge us. At long last he grumbles, “Make the penguins your symbol of peace.”

The dick thing about Michael and Cory splitting is that Cory wants to settle down and have kids as much as I do. I was honestly getting a bit jealous of him because it looked like Michael was going to be the one. My consolation was that I could be the weird straight uncle, like maybe Cory’s kids could be methadone to my raging paternal instincts or something. Dude has seriously let me down by letting that relationship fall apart.

“Bad day at work?” Cory asks when I got home. He’s already offering me a beer. All he needs is a string of pearls and he’d be a queer-guy Mrs. Beaver.

“I got sniffly over the penguins again.”

He sighs, withdraws the offered beer long enough to take the top off for me, then hands it back.

“Thanks,” I say, and take a long swallow. Then, “Is it cool if Kim comes over? We want to have a work confab thing, but keep it casual.” Kim is Fen Fen’s assigned Breeding Encouragement Specialist. Super sweet, with three-year-old twin girls who are constantly doing adorable things that get posted to Kim’s Facebook page. She was married before she got the job and her approach so far consists mostly of being utterly and jealousy-inducingly happy for all the world to see. She doesn’t seem bothered that Fen Fen isn’t getting the hint.

“Panda pimps unite?”

“If you cook for us, we’ll let you have one of the team T-shirts.”

“Deal.”

Cory does mysterious things to food objects in the kitchen while I bust ass cleaning up the apartment to make it presentable for company. Kim shows up with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.

We uncork the bottle right away and she and I hover near the kitchen island while Cory works. The bottle is nearly defeated, and Cory is serving something gloopy that smells like garlic and obesity when Kim gently steers the conversation toward work. “No, I’m serious. Fen Fen really has something good going on. She’s going to be a star.”

“A stand up panda act?” Cory asks as he grinds black pepper over the bowls. “Don’t they only have one punchline?”

“Exactly!” Kim says. “But she uses it really well. Even Jason will like this one.” She nudges me in the ribs to make sure I’m braced for it. “What does the female panda say when her sex therapist asks why she has low expectations for intercourse?”

I wince and bury my face in my hands.

Cory snickers. “Because he just eats, shoots, and leaves.”

“See. Brilliant!” Kim and Cory chortle.

I give the primal ape groan of abject despair. “You’re encouraging her.”

“Of course I am,” Kim says. “She’ll come around in her own time. And when she does, I want to make sure she’s as happy and fulfilled as she can be. That will lead to the best outcomes.”

“Don’t mind him,” Cory says as he hands Kim a bowl. “He’s bitter because he struck out at dinner last night.”

Kim waits until dessert to break the news that she and her husband are trying to get pregnant again. Twenty minutes later I’m on the couch trying not to bawl while Cory sees her out. He brings me an extra slice of Marie Callender’s calories-in-lieu-of-happiness pie, puts the plate on my knee, then sits down at my side. “You’ve got to get a handle on this.”

“I’m sorry. I know. It’s just…I’ve always wanted kids and the whole world has always been telling me I’m not supposed to care and even my job is telling me that but Kim’s just, whatever, guess I’ll have another one. It’s not fair. I feel like I’m running out of time.”

Cory picks up the fork from the plate, opens my hand, then manually closes my fingers around the fork. “Shut up. Shovel pie into your mouth until I’m done talking.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, but take a bite of the pie.

“Michael and I split up – ”

“Because he’s an idiot,” I jump in to say. Cory stabs a threatening finger toward my pie. I shut up and take another bite.

“We split up because he wasn’t ready to settle down and I was tired of waiting for him.”

I…hadn’t known that part of it. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. You didn’t say – ” I stop when he slaps the back of my head. A brotherly slap, not a domestic abuse slap. A hey-dipshit-you’re-supposed-to-be-eating slap.

“I’m sick of waiting around for you, too. Catch up to the 21st century. Let’s have a baby.”

It’s a really good thing I don’t follow instructions well, because otherwise I’d be strangling on a bite of Marie Callender. “I’m not gay.”

“I wasn’t planning to get you pregnant. We’ve been living together forever, we throw a mean dinner party on short notice, and we both want kids. Either you can wake up and face the facts, or you can keep getting weepy about penguins. Your call, but I’m done living with a mopey sex-pusher.”

I take a moment with that.

Cory takes my hand, steers the fork to scoop up a piece of pie, then delivers it to my mouth. Which is hanging open. Apparently I learned carp impersonation from Samantha.

“Our kids don’t get to play football. Concussions are serious bad news.”

“Fair deal,” Cory agrees.

So, adopting has a fuck-ton of paperwork and takes forever. At the rate we’re going, we could have gestated a baby elephant. But whatever. We’ve got it. It’s not like we’re balancing an egg on our feet all winter.

I still want to give Lan Lan a black eye more often than not, but I’ve switched him over to some great footage of seahorse dads. It’s kind of peaceful to watch them bouncing along in the water.

Fen Fen’s got a Facebook page now to support her self-published memoir, so she’s getting inundated with the photos of Kim’s twins and her ecstatic baby bump updates. Cory and I are trying to keep pace by posting selfies with stacks of paperwork, but it’s not quite the same. Not going to lie, though; it’s still fucking awesome.

The new strategy for Team Panda Pimp is to conspicuously have so much fun, Fen Fen breaks down and asks for insemination, if nothing else, to get material for her next memoir. It might even work. The international symbol of world peace won’t lift a paw to save itself from extinction, but humanity will bend over backward to perform test tube miracles on their behalf. There’s got to be some inspiring symbolism in there somewhere.

And it really hammers home Cory’s point: fucking is not required to make a family.

Author’s Note:One of my very good friends is extremely frustrated by pandas, to the point where he’ll happily go on at length about what a waste of space they are, and how we ought to let them go extinct. Frankly, he has a point. I was thinking about him while watching a documentary on emperor penguins, one thing led to another, and here we are. This story was more on than I realized though, as demonstrated by a pair of would-be penguin dads in Berlin.

Anaea Lay lives in Chicago, Illinois where she is engaged in a torrid love affair with the city.

She’s the fiction podcast editor for Strange Horizons, where you can hear her read a new short story nearly every week. She’s the president of the Dream Foundry, an organization dedicating to bolstering and nurturing the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts.

Her fiction work has appeared in a variety of venues including Lightspeed, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Pod Castle. Her interactive novel, Gilded Rails, was released by Choice of Games in 2018. She lives online at anaealay.com where you can find a complete biography and her blog. Follow her on Twitter @anaealay.

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