Tag Archives: Science Fiction / Fantasy

The Devil’s Take

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Silver
Joshua Flores

Photo Credit: Philippe Leroyer/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

Unspoiled vegetables cost too much, almost thrice the price of moldy ones. Rafa picked through the rotting wares.

“Father, why can’t we have fresh carrots for a change? Oh, and some meat?” Samuel pleaded as he pulled on Rafa’s threadbare grey woolen coat.

“Shush now. Devil of a time putting a few pence together. What, with me working all day digging black rock from the ground. Be glad we have something in our bellies tonight and hush down.”

The stall’s owner—a wizened hag—cackled at him to get a move on. Finding a few tomatoes, carrots, and other random provisions with a bit of crunch left to them and very few spots which he could cut away, he paid the crone her blood money.

Vegetable stew then for Rafa and his son tonight. Unless luck was with them and they came across a dead animal on the way home—even a juicy rat would do. Been months with no meat on the table.

Samuel kept pulling on Rafa’s coat as they walked in the middle of the street, avoiding horses and carriages that paid no heed to those in their path. Despite the risk of being trampled, walking on the streets was safer. Never knew when a flying bucketful of human waste and filth would be dumped out a window right onto you if you kept yourself on the side paths.

“Father. I want some milk tonight. Can we get some? Maybe a sweet? Please, Father.”

Rafa sighed. “Sorry, son. None of that for ya tonight. Maybe another day. We have to make do with what we have. Can’t let the Devil get us before our time, eh?”

Samuel pouted but stayed silent as they trudged along, keeping an eye on the gutters for any chance of having meat in his stew. After a few minutes, Samuel tugged on Rafa’s coat again.

‘Father, why don’t you hunt for meat? You were a hunter you told me. You can go out and get a goose, or a duck, maybe even a grouse.”

“Aye, I was a hunter. I hunted all types of game, Samuel. Not all of them were wild animals either. You know why I can’t hunt.”

“But Father, I want some meat.” Samuel’s protest was causing passersby to take notice.

“Hush boy. The forest is owned by the King. He doesn’t give leave to us for hunting. If caught, the penalty for poaching is death. That’s the why, boy. Now keep an eye out for a dead rat.”

 

Rafa and Samuel entered their home. Rafa couldn’t help but think it had seen better days when Maria was alive. She kept a clean and tidy home. She even patched things up when they needed repair. Now, piles of dirt and debris, webs and tiny insects littered the place. Rafa had to get up when the sun rose, take Samuel to Old Lady Veronica, then head to work in the dark mines digging for coal. He pulled out a few lumps from his bag. Part of his daily pay. He placed them in the stove and stoked a fire. He filled a pot with water and placed it on top of the stove. He then washed off the black powder which covered him from head to toe while the house warmed and the water boiled.

Freshened, Rafa sat at the table near the stove. He added salt and some dried herbs he had picked from the roadside to the pot of bubbling water.

He set to work on cutting off the bad bits from the vegetables, placing them into the pot to simmer. He heard a skittering and without a pause he threw his knife, skewering a rat against the corner. “Samuel. We be having meat tonight after all.” Rafa retrieved his knife and bounty.

Samuel looked up from his cot. “Father, when will supper be ready, I am starving.”

“We only just arrived, boy. Be a few minutes. Make yourself useful and sweep a bit, eh? Looks like the Devil blew through here. Could use a bit of tidying.”

“I’m tired, Father. Had to work on maths today with Miss Veronica. She’s a mean one, she is. Made me work hard.”

“Samuel, ya don’t know what tired is. Tired is where you work until your back is bent and your bones are crackling. Now get up and clean for ya supper.”

“I never knew Mother. I know others have mothers who clean and cook and look after them. Where is Mother?” Samuel asked trying to distract his father.

“We live in terrible times. What, with witch burnings, lynchings, and plagues killing people off. It is how we lost your mother, may God rest her soul. One day she was all cheery-eyed, the next she fainted with fever. Few days later, it took her. Had to raise ya by myself, I did. You were just a babe swathed in cloth then. Been seven years now. We managed to survive alright.”

“But Father…”

“Clean I said. Or may the Devil take you.” Rafa realized he had let his anger come out, but before he could apologize, there was a knock on the door.

Samuel stopped reaching for the broom and looked up at his father.

Rafa put down his knife. He had finished skinning the rat and had started butchering it. He washed the gore from his hands in the wash basin. Another knock.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Rafa answered as he kicked some of the clutter into a corner.

Rafa opened the door.

An old stately gentleman stood at the door. He removed his bowler hat and gave a slight bow. “Good evening. Mr. Rafa I presume? I am here to accept your offer.”

“Who are you? What offer might that be?”

“Ah, please forgive my manners. I go by many names: Scratch. Old Nick. Or, your favorite, the Devil. And the offer for me to take your son, Samuel, of course.”

Rafa’s unshaven face wrinkled in disbelief. “The Devil you say? I flirted with you most of my life and I must say, you don’t look like much. So please forgive me if I don’t believe you. Now if you don’t mind, I am making supper for me and my son.” Rafa began closing the door when the gentleman’s cane shot out and blocked it.

“Oh, I am definitely the Devil. I can prove it too.” The old man tapped his cane on the hard dirt floor three times and in an instant the house was clean, repaired, and tidied. A roasted grouse was sitting in the middle of the table with all the trimmings and sides. The aroma wafted over to Rafa. His mouth watered. Samuel ran to the food and was about to grab a leg when Rafa called for him to stop.

“Well, whether you be the Devil or a witch, matters not. I cannot allow you to take my son. I made no offer. So you best be gone.” Rafa straightened himself up to show he meant every word.

“You did make the offer. Heard it myself as I was walking past your place. You said ‘May the Devil take you.’ I may and I will.”

Rafa’s countenance darkened. “’Twas said in frustration and anger. There was no offer being made. Now, you don’t want to make me cross. I am not a nice man when I am pressed.”

“Rafa the Bloodhound. Rafa the Hungry Hunter. Rafa the Shadow. I know you. You have earned your way into my realm many times over. I have many who have entered it thanks to you. You are indeed a formidable man. But you are no match for me. I am not a man. Nor am I mortal. Come, let us partake of the feast I prepared while we come to terms?” Scratch’s arm outstretched towards the table as he tilted his head.

“I think not. You are not welcomed in my home. Take your favors away. We don’t need them.”

“Father. But it’s grouse. A proper roasted grouse. With potatoes and look, gravy! Oh and cranberry jam. Father, I am hungry. We have never eaten like this. Please let us eat?”

The food did smell good and Rafa’s belly was aching to get some into it.

Rafa opened the door wider to let his visitor enter. He allowed the visitor to take his chair while he sat in Maria’s. Samuel stood near his cot, not sure what to do.

“Samuel, come boy. May as well enjoy this food. Our benefactor won’t be staying long.” Rafa motioned for Samuel to take his seat. The boy did so.

Rafa carved the bird, giving Samuel a leg and a wing. He gave Scratch a breast and himself two thighs. Samuel piled potatoes, gravy, and cranberry jam onto his plate. He also poured himself a glass of milk. Rafa also filled his plate up. Scratch served himself some cranberry jam. He then dipped pieces of meat he delicately sliced off the breast in it before sending the fork to his mouth. He chewed quietly but with a smile. Several minutes passed as each of them ate without speaking.

Finally, it was Samuel who broke the silence. “Father, why is the Devil wanting to take me? You didn’t give me away as he says.”

Rafa released a low grunt and responded. “That I didn’t, son. Don’t you worry, you aren’t going anywhere. I will make sure of that.” Rafa’s fork stabbed a thigh, piercing it all the way through, releasing squirts of pink juice. He lifted the thigh and took a large bite out of the meat.

“So Mr. Scratch. Why not chalk this one up to experience and leave us be? We are a struggling folk, trying to survive in troubled times. My son has not yet ripened into a man. Has not discovered the curse of drink, the promise of love, nor the guilt of fight. He has a lot to do before he moves on from this Earth. All he needs is time. You have plenty of that. You don’t need him now. You can afford to wait for him when his time is done. Just like you are waiting for me, I suppose.”

Mr. Scratch finished chewing and swallowed. He then smiled showing bright white teeth.

“My dear Mr. Rafa. Your son is an innocent this is true. And you are not. But will he grow to be like his father? There is no guarantee of that. I don’t want to break up your home, but I must remind you, it was you who uttered the offer. I didn’t come to you unbidden.”

“Then I rescind the offer. No contract has been made.”

“You cannot rescind. There was no contract terms given when you offered. You didn’t ask for anything in return for Samuel.”

Rafa stood up, knife in hand, nostrils opening wide. “You. Will. Leave. Us. Alone.” His voice held steel, his eyes flashed the red of molten metal.

“Now. Now. Mr. Rafa. I’m a reasonable being. Perhaps we can substitute one offer for another?”

Rafa’s body relaxed and he allowed himself to sit down.

“Speak.”

“Your old life was, let’s say, profitable to me. When your wife passed, you made the choice to leave that path so you could take care of little Samuel here. You have done a marvelous job of it too, haven’t you? So you took to working menial jobs to help feed you both. But you miss your old life don’t you? I know you still practice to keep your skills honed.”

“That is not my life anymore. I no longer hunt people. For anyone. Not even you.”

“Here is my proposal, Mr. Rafa. You can keep your son. He can grow into a man and do all the things you envision for him. He will make his own decisions and decide his own fate. But you, you have to work for me. Hell has grown so much over the years, so much so that we have occasional misplaced souls. I am certain they have made their way up to the Human Realm. I want you to hunt them down and return them to me.”

“My son needs me. I cannot disappear for long periods of time hunting your sinners.”

“Also, in return for your services, you will be rewarded with enough gold to move from here to a bigger manor and have staff to watch over Samuel. Who knows, you may be able to woo a young lady to become his mother and care for him while you are away working.”

Rafa looked over to Samuel. Gold. Samuel could have meat every night. Fill out into a man of strong and sound body. He could have proper tutors. He could have a future much better than the one currently promised..

“Father. What does the Devil want you to do? I don’t understand.”

Rafa sat for a minute. “He wants me to hunt again. Not animals but people. Like I used to before you were born. He offers me good pay for it too. And, I must admit, I miss that life. It is in my blood.”

Scratch’s smile grew just a bit more. “So do we have a deal?”

Rafa looked at his son. Samuel’s eyes were wide, hopeful.

Rafa returned the Devil’s smile, albeit with yellowed teeth. “We do.”

pencil

Joshua Flores manifested in Chicago with Spanish as his first language, the struggle to learn English well lead him to read. He devoured comics and men’s adventure novels. Eventually, he exchanged Doc Savage, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes for authors. He scoured thrift stores and used book stores for Poe, Bloch, Beaumont, Ellison, and Bradbury. Horror wasn’t a specific genre but whenever Josh found it, it never failed to draw out raw emotions. Those emotions beckoned Josh to write. At ten years old, he two-finger-pecked short stories on an old electric typewriter. He hasn’t stopped writing since. That scares Josh. Email: Squarehopper[at]gmail.com

Risk Assessment

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Annie Percik

Photo Credit: NASA/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Captain Zheng Gan of the Terran Exploration Alliance flagship, Lapsang, raised his sandwich to his mouth to take a large bite.

“You’re going to die!”

The holographic form of the ship’s Virtual Engine for Risk Notification (VERN) materialised at his shoulder. It appeared as a slender white man in a dark suit and bowler hat, carrying a clipboard. Some programmer’s idea of a joke. The way it screamed right in his ear wasn’t particularly funny.

Gan didn’t even glance at it. “Why this time, VERN?”

“That white bread will spike your blood sugar and eventually all your limbs will have to be amputated! And then you’ll die!”

Gan wished he hasn’t asked. But past experience told him it was always worth checking with VERN before dismissing its warnings. The system’s settings were way off and desperately needed adjusting. But the technician working on the problem had died in the epidemic when the ship’s doctor had ignored VERN’s apparently paranoid rantings about a possible alien pathogen in the air vents. So now they were stuck with it.

To demonstrate his disinterest in VERN’s warning, Gan raised his sandwich and took a huge bite. As he did so, the ship’s proximity alarm sounded piercingly, making him jump. The bite of sandwich shot to the back of his throat, blocking his windpipe completely. He dropped the rest of the sandwich and reached out an arm in supplication, unable to draw in any air or make a sound.

VERN, still at his side, waved its hands frantically. As a hologram, it was unable to assist with the Heimlich manoeuvre.

“The captain is dying! The captain is dying!”

After Gan failed to respond to VERN’s panicked yells, Commander Janet Harcourt looked round from her station, took in the situation and sprang into action. She made two quick strides to the captain’s side, hoisted him up in front of her, placed her hands in the required position under his sternum and jerked backwards. On the third attempt, Gan felt the lodged mass of bread and chicken break free and shoot out of his mouth. It flew in a high arc over the pilot’s shoulder and landed with a squelch on the communications console.

As Gan bent over, gasping and coughing, Harcourt’s arms still steadying him, he caught sight of movement from the corner of his eye. Struggling to regain control of his breathing, he tilted his head to look at the view screen, which showed the wide-eyed face of a Tlagan, staring at him in horror from the bridge of one of their standard battle cruisers. The yellowish tint of the lizard-like alien’s leathery skin told Gan it was a male. The Tlagan opened its mouth and a stream of enraged hissing spewed out. The Lapsang’s translator kicked in.

“How dare you disrespect my people in this way! I will spare your puny vessel, but only because the importance of reporting your egregious disregard for the terms of our erstwhile peace treaty allows for no delay.”

The screen went black.

Gan looked over his shoulder at Harcourt, having difficulty processing what had just happened. The Tlagans abhorred physical contact of any kind—they reproduced by parthenogenesis—and had originally declared war on Terra after witnessing the multitude of ways in which humans used touch to communicate in everyday life. The conflict had been long and bloody, and had only ended six months previously. The Terran Exploration Alliance (TEA) had been founded in the wake of the peace treaty, with the Lapsang launching its maiden voyage to celebrate the new opportunities for exploration without fear of attack.

And now, after the Lapsang’s first encounter with another ship, they were apparently at war again.

VERN flailed its holographic arms. “You’ll all be court martialed! Unless you all die first!”

Gan thought fast. For once, VERN might be right. The TEA was still a branch of the military and High Command was going to be less than impressed with them being responsible for war breaking out again.

“Follow that cruiser, Lieutenant,” Gan called out to the pilot.

Lieutenant Kozlowski turned in his seat and stared at the captain.

“You heard me, Lieutenant,” Gan said, wishing his voice sounded less hoarse. “Get after that Tlagan ship right now. Don’t let it get too far ahead, but try not to attract its attention.”

The Lapsang might not have much weaponry, but it was fast and agile. They ought to be able to keep up with the battle cruiser without drawing its fire. Kozlowski capitulated and turned back to his console, tapping in commands. The starfield visible through the view screen shifted perspective as the ship came about. A small dot far ahead denoted the cruiser’s progress.

“What are you thinking, Captain?” Commander Harcourt asked.

Gan answered her question by issuing more orders. He spun to face the communications console.

“Lieutenant Commander Owusua, can you jam any outgoing signals from the cruiser?”

She looked at him gravely. “I should be able to. Yes, sir.”

“Do it.”

Owusua regarded the sticky glob of ejected sandwich and carefully gave it a wide berth in executing Gan’s order. “Signals jammed, sir.”

“It’s all very well stopping them getting a message out now. But what are we going to do when they get back to Tlagan space?” Harcourt wanted to know. “We can’t follow them all the way home. And if they decide to confront us, we’re toast.”

“I’ve just bought us some time,” Gan said. He had no idea how to solve their dilemma, either. “I’m hoping someone will come up with a plan before things get worse.”

“You’re all doomed!” VERN wailed. “The situation is hopeless!”

“Thanks, VERN. You’re a ray of sunshine as ever.” Gan looked round at the rest of his bridge crew. “Does anyone have anything more constructive to offer?”

Blank, worried faces looked back at him. Strategic planning was meant to be his department, but instinct had only brought him so far. They were hurtling towards what was now enemy space, with no hope of surviving a direct conflict. And, if they turned tail and went back to Earth, they would probably be thrown in prison. He would have to hope something occurred to him before they reached the point of no return.

The atmosphere on the bridge was tense, as Kozlowski worked to keep the Tlagan cruiser in sight and the Lapsang off its radar, while Owusua kept any announcements of the renewed war from escaping the jamming field she had extended around the cruiser. Gan noticed the rest of the bridge crew throwing anxious sidelong glances at him every now and then. But inspiration refused to come.

Eventually, Lieutenant Kozlowski announced, “We are approaching Tlagan space, Captain. What do you want me to do?”

Gan opened his mouth but nothing came out. He was an explorer, not a soldier. How was he supposed to know what to do in this situation. But before the silence dragged out to an embarrassing length, Owusua broke it.

“There’s another ship coming at us fast. From the direction of the Tlagan homeworld.” She turned wide, frightened eyes on Gan. “It’s an elite battle cruiser.” Those were three times the size of the standard ones. “And it’s hailing us.”

Gan felt what little of his sandwich he’d managed to eat turn over in his stomach. They were for it now. VERN was right. He had led his entire crew to their doom. He glanced round the bridge to make sure nobody was touching anyone else. There was no sense in exacerbating the problem even more. Then he straightened his uniform jacket and took a deep breath.

“On screen.”

The starfield was replaced by a larger and fancier version of the other cruiser’s bridge. This time, the purple tint of the captain’s skin denoted a female.

“Greetings, Lapsang.” The translator turned her hisses into a very cheery-sounding salutation. “You’re a long way from home.”

Gan stared at her. Was the jamming field still in effect? Had the other ship not managed to alert this one to the changed war status?

The Tlagan captain continued. “And I see you’ve brought us a present. We appreciate the assist.”

What on earth was she talking about? Gan looked at Owusua, who looked straight back, as baffled as he was.

“Um, you’re welcome…” He trailed off, not wanting to reveal his complete ignorance of what was going on.

“I have to admit I’m surprised that a human ship with little to no offensive capabilities would be willing to risk attack from one of our battle cruisers.” The Tlagan captain’s eyes shone with admiration. “I’m impressed that you humans are taking the peace treaty so seriously. To risk yourselves just to track a rogue ship and broadcast a distress signal on an open frequency to let us know where you were…” She shook her head in amazement. “That took some guts and could easily have gone very wrong for you. But we’ve been looking for this crew for weeks and haven’t managed to track them down. So you’ve done us a huge favour.”

“Um, you’re welcome…” Gan repeated, swallowing hard.

When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything more, the Tlagan captain nodded. “Right then. We’ll take it from here. We’ve got them secured in a forcefield so they won’t get away from us again. Oh, and I’ll send a communique to Terran High Command to commend you for your actions. I think you’ve just strengthened the peace between our two peoples considerably.”

The screen went blank, leaving Gan opening and closing his mouth like a fish. He turned to Owusua.

“What distress signal?” he asked. “You didn’t send out a distress signal, did you?”

Owusua shook her head. “No, sir. That would have been insane. Anybody could have picked it up and come to find us.” She gestured at the screen. “Just like they did.”

“So what was she talking about?” Gan felt like he was seriously losing the plot. He jumped as VERN appeared at his side again. At least this time, he didn’t have anything in his mouth.

“I sent the distress signal,” the hologram said. “The ship was in imminent danger of destruction! So I called for help! Any kind of help, from anywhere that was listening! It was the only way to save you all!”

Owusua scanned her console, her eyes alighting on the chewed up piece of sandwich. With a grimace of distaste, she flicked it away with her fingers to reveal a bright, flashing yellow light. The distress beacon. It had been going off the whole time.

“You can switch that off now,” Gan told her, then turned to gape at VERN. “I don’t believe it. You actually saved us.”

The hologram adopted a superior expression that actually matched its prim and proper appearance for once. “Of course,” it said. “It is my job to identify risks and protect the crew from danger.”

Gan collapsed back into his captain’s chair and wiped his hand over his face. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions.

“Lieutenant Kozlowski, plot a course for Earth. It seems we’ve averted a war and now we have commendations to collect. Let’s go home.”

pencil

Annie Percik lives in London with her husband, Dave, where she is revising her first novel, whilst working as a University Complaints Officer. She writes a blog about writing and posts short fiction on her website, which is also where all her current publications are listed. She also publishes a photo-story blog, recording the adventures of her teddy bear. He is much more popular online than she is. She likes to run away from zombies in her spare time. Twitter: @APercik | Email: annie[at]alobear.co.uk

Trapped in a Box

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Bronze
Karen Davis

Photo Credit: mwwile/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

“Step right this way, sir! Win the little lady a stuffed animal of her choice!”

“Try your luck at the ring toss!

“Come see our two-headed cow, perfectly preserved for over fifty years!

“Come show your skills at the balloon dart throw! Everyone’s a winner!”

As the couple strolled down the midway, the sideshow barkers called to them with one attraction after another. The old man looked at his wife and smiled. After all these years, they still loved to people watch at one of the only surviving public events from their youth. They remembered going to carnivals together as kids, and it remained pretty much the same, even now. Freak shows, rigged games, mirrored houses, and rickety dizzying rides. It was a thrilling place to them, even though they knew there was a curtain that separated the magic of the place from the grim reality of the world.

There were crowds of young people walking along. A few of them were laughing, taking pictures of themselves together, and daring each other to try the various games and shows. The old man remembered what it was like, to be young and full of so much energy and enthusiasm. But many of the groups of people were trudging past the games without noticing, too busy looking down at their phones. The old man was sad for them. He was part of the last generation that had grown up without internet access, and he wished they could experience life the way he had. He sighed but then looked over at his wife and remembered the good life that he’d had with her.

As they were walking past one colorful attraction, he noticed a boy getting in line. It looked like he was trying to impress his young girlfriend by attempting to win the over-hyped contest.

“Test your powers of bravery and fortitude!” The man at the podium called to everyone walking by, while encouraging the boy to move forward to the front of the line. “Take a step back in time and see how you might survive the torture of the ages!”

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” the boy said with a mixed look of bravado and fear on his face.

“That’s a fearless young man!” the barker yelled to the crowd. And then he said quietly to the boy, “You sure you can handle it?”

The boy balked and then set his face to stone. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a joke, right? Of course I can handle it.”

“Fine. One ticket, please. You will remain inside the room until you ask three times to be let out. We will give you three chances so that you will be sure you want out. We wouldn’t want you to lose your chance just because you panicked.”

“Panic? Why would I do that? This is just a silly trick. There’s nothing in there that can scare me into wanting out.”

“Nothing, indeed, sir! I believe we may have our winner for tonight!” He gave a wide smile and a wink and gestured toward a small metal box that was built into the door. “Please deposit everything in your pockets in this lock box, which will be safely secured just inside the room with you.”

The boy looked around with a smirk. “Why do I have to do that?”

“It’s for your own safety and for the integrity of the game, sir. Thank you very much!”

The boy emptied his pockets into the metal box.

“And your cell phone, sir.”

The boy looked at the phone in his hand and paused for a moment. He placed it in the box with his other items, and the man closed and locked it.

“Thank you very much, sir. Now just step inside the room of torture and see how you fare. Any man who can withstand this room is a brave soul, but the man who holds the record for the longest time in the room tonight will win free tickets to our main-stage show tomorrow night! Good luck to you, sir!”

With that, he closed the door behind the boy, who looked back one last time with confusion on his face as the door sealed shut.

“The record so far for tonight is three-and-a-half minutes!” the barker called. “Will this young man be able to beat that? Let’s find out…”

Thirty seconds passed, and the room was silent.

A minute, and the boy’s friends looked at each other and smiled.

Ninety seconds, and they thought they heard stirring inside the room.

At two minutes, there was a knock on the door.

“I want to come out now, please.”

“Listen here!” the barker called. “The young man has called to be let out one time. He will be given two more opportunities to show his bravery!”

After another minute, there was another knock. “I really want out,” the boy called from inside the room.

“That’s two! Be brave, young man! We believe you can do it! Just another thirty seconds and you will have the record for this evening!”

At that point, there was a terrible commotion from inside the room. The boy was banging on the door and screaming, “Let me out! Let me out! You’ve gotta let me out of here! I can’t stand it anymore!”

The man at the podium shook his head and opened the door.

The boy stumbled out of the room, looking disoriented. His face was flushed, and his hands were shaking.

His friends looked at him wide-eyed. “What was it? What was in there that was so scary? Is it another person? Did they hurt you? What? Tell us! What?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispered as he quickly gathered his belongings from the small metal box.

“What do you mean, you don’t want to talk about it? It’s just a gag, right?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing. I just… can we leave now?”

“Well, why were you screaming then?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” he yelled at his friends. He walked away, and his friends followed as they made their way toward the exit of the carnival.

The old man who had been watching turned to his wife and asked, “Should I try it? It can’t be that bad, right? He was just a kid. They probably spooked him with some flashing lights and fake monsters or something.”

“I don’t know,” his wife replied. “That kid looked pretty freaked out. Do you think your body could take that kind of stress?”

He looked at his wife and frowned. With his recent health problems, a lot of the fun things in his life had been taken away. This would be just one more thing that he couldn’t enjoy like he used to.

As they were talking, another man walked up to the podium. He was in his thirties and was looking at his phone with an irritated expression until he stopped in front of the podium.

“One ticket, please,” the barker told him.

“What is this anyway?” the young man asked.

“A simple test of your manhood, sir! See if you can withstand—”

“Okay, okay. Whatever. Here’s my ticket. What do I do now?”

“Please deposit everything in your pockets in this lock box, which will be safely secured just inside the room with you.”

“Okay, let’s get this over with.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” the barker scolded. “Don’t forget to put your cell phone in the box.”

The man dropped his phone in with a huff.

“Good luck, honey!” the young man’s girlfriend called from the line. She was laughing at him as he entered the room. “He hates this stuff,” she told the old man’s wife as they watched the door close for a second time.

“The record so far for tonight is three-and-a-half minutes!” the barker called. “Will this gentleman be able to beat that? Let’s find out…”

Thirty seconds passed, and the room was silent.

A minute, and the young man’s girlfriend looked at the older couple and smiled nervously. “He really does hate these types of things. I’m surprised he agreed to do it.”

Ninety seconds, and they thought they heard stirring inside the room.

The girlfriend spoke again. “I thought he would come out by now. He just wants to prove me wrong. I told him he wouldn’t last more than a minute.”

At two minutes, there was a knock on the door.

“Let me out,” the man called forcefully.

“Listen here!” the barker called. “The gentleman has called to be let out one time. He will be given two more opportunities to show his bravery!”

Immediately, there was another knock. “Let me out, I said!” He sounded angry and fearful.

“That’s two! Be brave, sir! We believe you can do it! Just another sixty seconds and you will have the record for this evening!”

“Get me out of here, or I’m going to sue!” the man roared from inside the room.

The barker cleared his throat and opened the door, making sure to take a quick step back so the young man could rush out of the room. He was breathing heavily, gulping down the air as if he’d been deprived of it for the last couple of minutes.

“Where are my things?” he demanded.

He was shown the open box where he hastily grabbed his belongings and stomped off down the midway with his girlfriend following in a panic.

“Are you okay, honey? What happened? Did they suck all the air out of the room?”

“Of course not! Don’t be silly! Let’s just get out of this stupid place.”

“Don’t be mad at me, please! It was supposed to be funny! I’ll never make you do anything like that again!”

The young couple could be heard arguing until they were out of sight as they left the carnival.

The old man and his wife looked at each other in disbelief. What could possibly be so terrible in that room? The second person had been a grown man and was clearly disturbed when he left the room.

The old man’s wife shook her head. “I don’t think you should do it. I don’t want to take any chances. If these young people can’t withstand whatever is in that room, how will you do it? I don’t mean to insult you, but I also don’t want to risk your health.”

The old man looked at the small, colorful building and then back at his wife. He had a look of determination on his face. “I’m going to do it,” he declared to her.

After all, what was living if there were no risks to be taken. Plus, he was older and wiser than those other two. Surely, he would be able to see through the illusion of whatever scary thing was being done or seen in that room. He was smarter than those other two and was sure he could do it.

His wife begged him, “No, you don’t have to. I already know you’re brave. You’ve done so much over all these years. You don’t have anything to prove to me.”

“But I can win,” he told her. “I’ve never been very good at games and contests, but I really do believe I can win this one.”

“You don’t even know what it is!”

“No, but it’s just a carnival game. How bad can it be?”

She looked at him and wished he would change his mind, but she knew there was nothing she could say now to make him do that. Once he got that look on his face, he was determined that he would succeed. She had learned over the years to trust him when he decided to do something. She knew that he wouldn’t do anything too dangerous. She knew that he would never do anything that could hurt him or her.

She felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, probably because of his recent health diagnosis. She had tried to shelter him so much more recently. She had tried to stop him from taking any risks that could damage his health. Maybe she had done too much to get in the way of his ability to live his life and to be the man he wanted to be. Maybe this would be a good chance to show him that she trusted him and that she believed in him.

“I’m going to do it,” he said again.

She smiled at him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Yes, you will,” she said as she gave him a small kiss on the cheek and looked him in the eye. “I know you will.”

He turned confidently and walked up to the barker who was grinning at their overheard conversation. He put his face close to the old man’s ear and whispered, “That’s a good woman you have there. And I think she’s right. I think you can win this one. One ticket, please.”

The man gave him his ticket.

“Please deposit everything in your pockets in this lock box, which will be safely secured just inside the room with you.”

The old man put his wallet, comb, and pocketknife into the metal box.

“And your cell phone, sir?”

“Phone? No, I didn’t bring it tonight. The only person I need to call is here with me.”

The barker gave him a strange smile and waved him into the room. As the door closed, the old man turned around to look at his wife, confused for a moment, and then a smile spread across his face.

He could hear the barker outside calling to the crowd, “The record so far for tonight is three-and-a-half minutes! Will this gentleman be able to beat that? Let’s find out…”

The man looked all around the room, which was dimly lit, to see if there was anything that might open to allow a “monster” to come into the room to scare him. He saw nothing. It was simply a white-painted metal room with no windows and no doors except the one he had come through. There was nothing.

Thirty seconds passed, and the room was silent.

But the the metal box in the door began to hum. It had the sound of a cell phone ringing.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

He hadn’t put anything electronic into the box, so he wasn’t sure where the sound was coming from.

After a minute, the barker called again, “Will this man be our winner tonight? Can he withstand the torture of this time-travelling room of the ages?”

The metal box vibrated again.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

*What was that sound?*

Ninety seconds, and he could tell there was a crowd gathering outside. The noise of the people was muffled, but there were many voices of concern and fascination.

At two minutes, the man thought about the fact that there was nothing in the room. Nothing except that infernal buzzing. He wondered why on earth this would be tortuous to anyone.

At three minutes, he got bored and started daydreaming. He thought about the first carnival he ever went to. He had gone with his friends, and they had very little money between them. They had tried some of the contests on the midway and had lost every time. They hadn’t been told that so many of the games were rigged and that their money would have been better spent on spinning rides or cotton candy or popcorn. He had won one time—one of the easier games—and his prize was a plastic ring. He had given the ring to a girl at school who had blushed and run away.

At seven minutes, the man could hear the crowd growing larger and more agitated. The buzzing in the door continued, but he was able to ignore it as he thought again about times he had been to the carnival before. He had taken his wife to one when they were young and foolish, but he had learned some of the tricks of the contests and knew which ones he would lose and which ones he could win. She had come home with a giant smiling stuffed bear that night, and she had kissed him for the first time on her doorstep before she stepped inside, smiling back at him through the window in the door.

He smiled to himself now, thinking about how lovely she had looked that night, and how she was still that girl to him. He thought about her standing on the other side of this metal door and wondered if she was still proud of him today.

At twelve minutes, the barker yelled loudly, to draw more attention to “the marvel behind these walls, the man who could do the impossible!” He didn’t feel like he was doing anything spectacular, but if standing in this little room made him a hero to his wife, he would stay in as long as they would allow him to.

The box buzzed again.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

It reminded him of a time, not so very long ago, when his phone sat buzzing on the kitchen table. When he had gotten the call from his doctor with that awful diagnosis. He hadn’t known that words could bring a man to his knees like that. He wasn’t worried for himself. He only cared about how it would affect his family.

He did everything the doctors suggested, every treatment that was available. Nothing seemed to work. He had resolved to die gracefully and without all the hysteria. But one day, he went to an appointment and his doctor said he was getting better. He said that the man might even be fine for a very long time. He had thought it was impossible, a miracle. It was unusual, but it did happen occasionally. His doctor told him, it was like winning the lottery. He had told his doctor that he’d never won anything like that in his life. And his doctor told him maybe he should try his luck more often.

At seventeen minutes, the man began to wonder how long he had been in that metal room. It didn’t seem like very long, but his mind had been wandering so he wasn’t sure.

The box buzzed again.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

He looked at the box and thought about the boy and the young man who had been in this room before him. They had been panicked, afraid, anxious to get back out into the world. To have their things in their pockets again. To get out of this dream world and back to their well-documented realities where they could escape almost anything at the touch of a button.

He had no need to escape. He was right where he wanted to be, in this strange little room with a buzzing metal box and a head full of memories. He was sad for those other two and also for the one who had set the three-and-a-half-minute record earlier in the evening—if he really did exist at all. He wished those others could have been comfortable in this place, locked in with themselves, but he guessed that was just too much to ask of some people. Or maybe of most people. He didn’t know because he had his small circle of people who concerned him, and the rest were of no consequence to his daily life. And he was of no consequence to theirs.

At eighteen minutes, there was a knock on the door. “How are you doing in there, sir? Are you okay? Do you need medical attention?” The barker grinned at his clever techniques for getting the crowds riled up.

The old man’s wife had a worried look on her face, and she stepped forward to confront the barker.

“Let him out,” she told him forcefully.

“But he hasn’t called to be let out yet. I have to give him three opportunities—”

“You open that door this very minute!” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am,” he complied.

He opened the door to find the man standing in the middle of the room with a smile on his face. The crowd that had gathered gawked at him with their eyes wide and their mouths gaping.

The woman asked her husband, “Are you okay? Why didn’t you call to be let out? I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

The man just looked at her and kept smiling. “I’m fine. You shouldn’t have worried. I’ve been around long enough. I can handle pretty much anything.”

The barker seized the opportunity. “Come one! Come all! See the man who can endure the strangest and most debilitating torture our century of technology has ever cooked up! He stayed in this ancient room of torture for eighteen minutes! That’s, right, eighteen minutes! Do you think you can do better?! Come and see! Test your mettle in this impossibly horrific room! Who can do it? You, sir? Can you do it? Can you?”

As the old man and his wife walked away, he held his head high, proud to know that he was a man who would not be tortured by his own mind.

pencil

Karen Davis is a short story writer from Knoxville, TN. Email: davisflyer.karen[at]gmail.com

Gift of the Gods

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Silver
Caitlin Cacciatore

Photo Credit: Jurek D./Flickr (CC-by-nc)

the moon is speaking to me,
as the wolf speaks to it;
my heart is listening,
beating slow and steady in the twilight,
but it is my soul that hears.

*

The physicists on the holoscreen were having a conniption. “What happened last night just isn’t possible,” one of them was saying.

“Truly, an aberration,” agreed another.

“The laws of nature will not abide,” put forth the third as she gesticulated wildly.

Yet, last night had still happened. The physicists couldn’t change that, the United Parliament of the Nine Worlds couldn’t explain it, and the rest of the system couldn’t stop talking about it.

Winford was hardly an exception. In the right corner of his glasses, Avery was speaking, her sweet, round face bobbing up and down in the corner of his vision.

“I can’t believe it,” she was saying. “You are going to enter, won’t you?”

“Me?” Winford scoffed. “Of all people? You’d have better luck,” he said in a tone that implied just what he thought of her luck, which wasn’t much at the moment.

“But Winford, think about it.” Her voice was as dulcet as ever, yet it grated on him today.

“I have,” he snapped, betraying just how much he had, indeed, been thinking about it. Last night had been… transcendental wasn’t the word for it, but something had sparked within him at the sight of what everyone was calling ‘The Being.’ Something electric had fizzled to life inside of him, a string of lightning that, once lit, he’d struggled not to kindle. What hope did he have, after all, of winning? What did he have to his name? What gifts? What beauty? He had nothing—nothing save for his words, and his poetry, and his writing.

“You know,” Avery went on, “I think we should both enter. What do we have to lose?”

“Everything,” said Winford, before he could stop himself. “I mean…” He tried to backtrack. “There’s an entry fee, for one. ‘Something valuable,’ that’s what this Being wants. I don’t have a single thing of value. I pawned every beautiful thing I had on Earth to get to the colonies, and now…”

“I know,” she said, face crinkling in sympathy. “There are other things of value, too, though, you know.”

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Winford said, and with a wave of his hand, dismissed the call. It was the height of rudeness, and usually, he’d never do such a thing to his best friend, but something inexplicable had changed last night, when every holoscreen in the system had simultaneously broadcast the message from The Being. It simply wasn’t possible for a message to travel such a distance all at once; simultaneous broadcasts were a thing of the past, back in those halcyon days when Earth, cradle of life, was humanity’s only home.

Light only travels so fast. Everyone knew that, from the physicists on the screen to the youngest schoolchild in the colonies. A message from Earth took a little over an hour and a half to reach Titan. Yet, last night’s message had appeared at exactly the same time, on every single digital screen in the system.

Little was known about The Being other than what he had said in his broadcast. Already, he’d captivated the hearts of millions with his speech. An immortal being, he’d said he was, from another system. One who’d lost his lover, and his home, to a war that had been waged across a millennium. The Being had one request for the people of the Sol System, and it was to be decided through a battle of wills, a contest of sorts. “Make me fall in love again,” was all he’d asked. “I want to feel the light of a foreign heart smiling once more upon my own.”

Winford had felt as though The Being had been looking straight into his soul as he’d said those words, and two things were for certain, one being that he had to enter the contest, lest he spend the rest of his mortal life wondering ‘what if,’ the other, that he hadn’t a shot in hell of winning.

*

somewhere further off,
in another place,
in a different time,
you, too,
are sitting under the light of the pagan moon.

*

Everything was going far too well. He’d sent out a burst of information through the System Wide Server to the spatiotemporal coordinates that he’d hastened to write down at the end of last night’s broadcast. As a poet, he was one of those rare few who still imported paper, a precious and expensive commodity, as trees did not grow well on the outer worlds.

Twenty minutes later, the SWS had informed him that his payment of a poem—unpublished, of course—was accepted as a form of ‘valuable’ currency. The Being had accepted it as an entry fee, and for that, Winford had been glad, but still, he’d had no hope of anything further.

Two days after that, he’d gotten an info burst stating that he was cordially invited to be amongst the first round of finalists to be beamed to a secret location on one of Saturn’s smaller moons, Fenrir, so named after the wolf that swallowed the sun in Ancient Norse Mythology.

Winford couldn’t believe his luck. He’d been waving off Avery’s calls since yesterday. Another simultaneous broadcast had announced him as one of the first waves of finalists. The physicists had another fit, at least, those remaining at their posts had a fit, most having quit their jobs in protest of the flagrant misuse and abuse of the laws of physics on behalf of The Being.

He had troubles other than the laws of physics at the moment, though. He had nothing to wear, and the finalists’ banquet was in an Earth week.

It was time to go to the marketplace.

*

there is no difference between us;
not much has changed
between the watcher
and the watched.
you, too, ache, and long, and lust
for the shores of another world.
the moon is shining through the cloud cover,
and she is speaking,
and something primal within us
flares and does not falter
as it turns its face towards the stars and howls.

*

The marketplace was bustling, yet it seemed that the ocean of people parted for him as the Red Sea had for Moses. There were stares and gawking, and many people were waving their arms to take photos with their hologlasses. It was a spectacle, to say the least, and Winford wanted none of it.

Hurrying into the closest shop selling the high-end robes he’d decided on wearing for the banquet, he stopped short when every eye in the store turned to him.

“You must be Winford,” the merchant said, hurrying towards him with a simpering smile.

Winford blushed. “That is my name, yes,” he said.

“You’ve been all over the SWS,” the merchant cooed. “I am so glad you deigned to come to this shop. We’ll treat you like royalty.”

As the merchant ushered Winford further into the shop, he had to wave away another call from Avery.

He was swept up in a whirlwind of colors and patterned robes beaded with pearls, imported directly from the seas of Earth. He had a moment of panic when he decided upon a deep burgundy robe with cloned Arctic fox fur at the cuffs and a simple yet elegant stitching pattern. How in all the moons would he pay for it?

“Didn’t you hear?” the merchant asked. “The Being has arranged for all of your expenses to be fully accounted for.”

Winford’s jaw worked, and his mind raced. Just who was this Being, and what knowledge did he have of Sol’s currency and bartering systems? Why was this new arrival, this stranger in a strange place, so powerful after such a short while? The physicists had been right; the laws of nature, nor of man, would not abide.

And above all else, why was Winford, of all people, on the fast track to winning, when mere days ago, he’d been just another voice in the fugue of the twenty billion Earthen descendants in the colonies alone. Another ten billion people lived on the homeworld, and out of everyone, from everywhere, it was he who had been chosen.

A storm was brewing. That much, he knew.

With a simper and a smile, Winford allowed the attendants to pack up his bags while the merchant made idle talk of the contest, and the announced contestants—if Winford had been listening, or, indeed, if he could hear anything over the fog of voices in his head, he’d have learned that eleven were women, five were men, and the other four identified beyond the binary. They ranged in age from 17 to 63, and most, if not all, were rumored to have some fabulous, eccentric ability to their name.

“And what, darling, is your claim to fame?”

“Oh, me?” Winford asked, shaking out of his reverie. “I’m just a poet.”

“Then you, my dear,” said the merchant, “must be the poet of the ages.”

*

the moon grows bright,
and the separation between you and me
and the endless waters of the soul of the sea
and the fruits of our youth,
hanging from the boughs of Eden in various states of tempestuousness—
you, wine-sweet and ready, you—green and new,
you—small and unsteady—
you, still discussing the details with the Devil,
you—in Eve’s brown hand,
poised on the precipice between the fallen and the fall,
you—newly defiled—
you, turning back into the Earth from whence thou cometh.

*

The banquet arrived all too quickly. The days passed in a blur, and there were no more holo-broadcasts from The Being. In what seemed to go by as a flickering of many-colored leaves falling from the autumnal trees, the week went by, leaving Winford reeling.

The banquet arrived, and Winford stood, feeling painfully plain in his burgundy robe with the golden stitching that had seemed to delicate and refined at the time, in a corner of the palace that had been erected for the purpose of this night, watching the other contestants wait and pace on the gilded floor for The Being to bless them with his presence.

A booming voice that resonated throughout Winford’s being spoke, voice cavernous and echoing the in high-ceilinged hall. “My name,” it said, “is Thaddeus. I was last on your world three-thousand years ago, in the company of another immortal.”

Gasps and whispers ricocheted through the room like bullets.

“Silence,” the voice said, more quietly than it had previously done so. The room fell still, and Thaddeus continued.

“I have brought you here, today, to share with you a gift that not many ever receive—that of eternity.”

A murmur rose again and fell like a tidal wave over the room.

“Silence,” the voice whispered, and all was once more calm.

“I will call you all by name. You will, one by one, step forward and into the adjacent room, where I will be waiting for you on the far side of the door,” Thaddeus spoke.

“And then, I will ask you a question, and your answer will determine your fate.” A long pause ensued, long enough that a voice or two raised in protest. Then, Thaddeus continued. “Most of you, in fact… all, save for one of you, will become Eternals. You will be scattered across the rivers of time, your memories tossed to the wind like seed, and I will not look to see where they land. Do not worry; my people will sing of you for ages to come. This is how we are able to live to see years untold; this is how we have become like Gods.”

This time, when Thaddeus finished speaking, an outraged roar thundered through the hall. Everyone, it seemed, was scattering already, frantically looking for a way out, but there was none.

“Do not run. Be unafraid,” said Thaddeus, and a hush fell over the room, as if everyone had accepted their fates at once.

“I will proceed to call you… now.”

Winford blinked. It was as if he had fallen out of a trance. “Wait,” he called out, in spite of himself.

“Yes?” Thaddeus sounded patient, and infinitely kind.

Winford wondered, desperately, whether that same electric spark that had been tugging at him ever since the broadcast was somehow connected to Thaddeus, if the other felt that same pulsing, vibrant, beating heart of beauty that he did.

“What happens to the one? Nineteen of us will be…” He hesitated. “…scattered, as you say, but what will happen to the one who remains?”

Winford could hear the smile in Thaddeus’s voice. “They will stand by my side until the end of time, and I will love and cherish them until the stars burn out. Now. Onwards and upwards, and on to greater things. Lucius, The Architect of the Future. Please step forward.”

The assembled contestants parted, and Lucius stepped forward. He gave a weak smile, and stepped into the adjacent room. After a few moments, a flash of light could be seen from the tiny gap where the door met the floor.

“Hayden, Thinker of Timeless Thoughts.” Hayden went forth, and this time, only moments passed before the blinding light came again.

And so it went. Elden, Healer of Time, was called, then Mar, Dreamer of Impossible Dreams.

Ralu, the Hunter of Yore. Tawi, Hero Who is Always Fain to Fight. After a while, the contestants passed in a blur of names and titles. Kiria, and a woman who was wearing a blood orange ombre ballgown. Durla, and a man who trembled and fumbled as he tried to open the door. Tra’Li, who tried to run before it seemed as though he was possessed by some incredible calm and practically floated through the doors. Amaranth, whose beauty rivaled the flower after which she was named. A few others whose names and titles Winford did not hear, so consumed was he by the fire of betrayal and the sting of deceit.

He’d had such hopes. Such dreams. It was a while before he realized that no names had been called in a few minutes, and he startled. Was he alone?

No; there was a woman left in the room with him. Where had the time gone? Perhaps that is what happens when one gets too close to eternity, Winford thought.

“I guess it’s just you and me, then,” she said, extending her hand for a shake. “May the best person win,” she spoke, though her voice was shaky, and her grip weak.

But Winford knew how she felt. He tried, and could not speak at all, so he just nodded, dumbly.

Thaddeus spoke. “Lovina, Far-Seer,” he said, and the woman smiled bravely and went into the other room.

Winford crumbled to the ground, half in relief, half in despair. Then, he waited.

*

time’s arrow only flies one way,
but tonight is eternal,
bright and blue and bare as the moon.
autumn is standing in the entryway,
knowing the inexorability of her arrival,
yet coyness keeps her features schooled
into an expression of indecision.
Do I stay, or do I go, she ponders,
yet we all know how this story ends.

*

After a long while—Winford was not sure just how long, as time seemed to pass like molasses, dark and slow and sticky, while he waited—Thaddeus spoke again. “Winford, Poet of the Ages.”

Slowly, Winford rose.

He opened the door, and entered the other room.

Thaddeus was seated in a throne, one leg crossed over the other.

“Well, my boy, well done,” he said.

Some previously untapped vein of fortitude welled up within Winford. “I believe you have a question for me,” he said, straightening his spine.

“My dear, we have all the time in the world. You are the final contestant to be left standing. What of pleasantries? What of the ebb and flow, the give and take, of polite discourse? I have missed that ever so much. I have been alone for too long. Breaking the speed of light may be child’s play for me, but eternity passes only so fast.”

“What do you want? I mean, really? You brought us all here under pretense—with the hope of fabulous riches, and an immortal lover. And now nineteen of us are dead, and you expect me to believe that I will stand by your throne for the rest of my life?” Yet, even as Winford spoke, some sort of hope bubbled up within him. Perhaps that was just what Thaddeus was offering him.

“No,” Thaddeus said after a long while. “I don’t expect you to believe anything. Faith… faith is overrated. And your fellow beings—what do you call yourselves?”

“Humans,” Winford bit out.

“Ah, yes. Your fellow humans are simply living a different kind of life. Surfing the cosmic winds as elemental particles, their souls freed from their mortal confines. As I said, this is how I and others of my kind have achieved a sort of immortality. I sacrificed them on the altar of my people. They should feel blessed to serve us, as we are like Gods.”

Winford didn’t speak. The courage he’d found earlier was quickly ebbing. He was next, wasn’t he?

“But I am different,” Thaddeus finally said when no answer was forthcoming. “I tire of immortality. The winner of this contest—the one who stands before me—Winford, Poet of the Ages—will not merely have a station beside my throne. He shall sit upon it.”

It took Winford a moment to process those words. “You mean—”

Thaddeus interrupted before he had a chance to finish that thought. “Yes, my dear. I mean you are to become like God, and take my place as an enteral being who shall die only when the last of the stars burn out, when the universe is dark and cold and empty and in her death throes.”

Winford paled. “No,” he whispered. “No. Just… No.” Everything was unraveling. He had wanted so desperately to win this contest when it had first been announced. Him, luckless and hapless and unsteady on his feet. He’d wanted to feel the love of an immortal, to be scattered across the sky when he died as King Jupiter scattered Ganymede, his cupbearer and young lover. He’d wanted a fantastic life, one filled with adventure and bonbons and fantasies beyond his wildest imaginings.

He’d never wanted to take Thaddeus’s place, never wanted the immortal he’d fallen in love with the instant the broadcast had cut off to die.

“Winford,” Thaddeus said, not unkindly, “I don’t think you have much choice in the matter.”

“But don’t you feel it?” Winford asked, eyes wild. “Tell me you feel it.” He could still feel it, that golden, electric thread connecting him to Thaddeus.

“I’ve lived too long,” Thaddeus explained. “I don’t feel anything, anymore.”

And with that, the very last of Winford’s hopes and dreams were crushed, scattered to the wind like seed, and he could not look to see where they landed.

A sense of resignation overcame him, and he was unsure if it was genuine or if Thaddeus was forcing him to feel it. It truly didn’t matter at this point. Here, on Fenrir, alone with Thaddeus and the lingering echoes of nineteen other sacrificed souls, no one would hear him scream.

“Fine,” he spat out. “I will take your place, coward though you are.”

Thaddeus smiled. “Yes, you shall.”

With that, he rose, slowly, bones creaking, chair shivering in his absence.

“Go on. Sit.”

Winford did, and at first, nothing much happened.

A moment later, Thaddeus burst into flames before him, and a moment after that, there was nothing but ash to show where he had been.

And as he closed his eyes, Winford, who had just witnessed every ounce of faith he’d ever had turn to dust, did not pray.

*

even the moon, beautiful though she may be,
cannot escape eternity.
she cannot flee from death
as desert merchants are wont to do,
and even if she did,
he’d still find her,
somewhere between Samara
and the constellation Sagittarius.

*

Winford, Poet of the Ages, immortal being, God who would not falter in his beauty or his strength until the stars burnt themselves out, sat upon his lonely throne and recounted his days—the day of the broadcast, the day at the marketplace, the day of the banquet, then every day after that, stacked on top of one another like the pages of a book.

Time passes, but only so fast. Eternity was a long while to wait.

Yet wait he would, traveling the winds of time and feasting on the souls of the vanquished, those valiant, noble creatures from the Sol system and other star systems across the galaxy, who had been sacrificed on the altar of someone else’s immortality.

Wait he would, watching the flickering of the stars like dusk to dawn, each hour an eternity, every eon an hour.

One by one, the stars went out. New ones burned bright in their place. Years passed, their numbers uncounted, untold.

Winford was so very alone, traveling from world to world in search of someone, anyone, who could ignite the flame that had long since died within him. Mortal lives are only so long, though, and flared and faded before he could even think to blink.

Lonely, lost, and far from home, Winford waited, reciting the lines of a poem that had been ancient when the stars were new.

no mortal hand can fashion eternity out of an hour,
and even the moon in her blue lace
grows older by the moment.

shhh—Lune, I shall keep thy secrets, if thou shalt keep mine.

tell only the watchers,
and even then, only whisper.pencil

Caitlin Cacciatore is a New York City-based poet and writer. She enjoys writing science fiction, space operas, and love poems. She finds beauty and elegance in the simple yet profound elements of life, and wishes to immortalize that beauty in her stories and poetry. Email: caitlin.cacciatore[at]macaulay.cuny.edu

Business as Usual

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Michelle LaValley & Jon Meaders

Photo Credit: Jan Fidler/Flickr (CC-by)

Alex Kessler darted through the main lobby doors of the place she worked and was greeted with a crisp female voice. “Welcome to the offices of Traditional Banking and Investment Technology Services, TBITS, the leader in financial services and technologies both home and abroad as rated by Universal Standards of Business Services, a proud TBITS subsidiary. If you are here for spectating the Frederick H. Martin Grant Competition, please have your QR Code ready before approaching a reception drone. If you need help…” The voice faded away.

Alex ignored the announcement, pausing only long enough to get a sense of her surroundings. It was unusual for her to enter the building this way, but she knew she needed an employee elevator as soon as possible. Of all the days to be late, she lamented to herself. Normally she was very punctual, but it was just one of those days where everything went wrong.

From the moment she had woken up that morning, she had taken great care with her appearance. On a typical day, she would not have bothered as much, but she had been preparing for this presentation for weeks. She was irked when all of her hard work was ruined by her morning coffee that had, of course, sloshed out of her cup and down her white blouse and jacket. It had taken more time to find a suitable alternative than she had realized which forced her to skip breakfast in order to make up for the lost time.

In the end, Alex was still able to reach the main floor of her apartment on time. She had not made it more than eight steps down the sidewalk when the heel to one of her favorite pumps broke, forcing an aggravating trip back up to her fourth-floor apartment barefoot. She was not surprised when she missed her bus, but she just about threw a fit when the live feed indicated the next available transit was delayed indefinitely due to closed lanes. Alex cursed those stubborn few who still drove; it was probably an accident of some sort. The only option left for her was to hail a cab. It should have been easy since she kept a premium subscription to the app just in case she needed an auto-taxi. However, Alex’s app kept hailing auto-taxis on the other side of the city. By the time Alex had reached the outer doors to TBITS, she was forty-five minutes late. Once there, she simply melded into the crowds entering through the front lobby.

She felt a brief sense of relief when the elevator doors finally closed. She selected floor five and thought to herself, I don’t even have time to prep the sim rooms. Diana’s probably speaking with the competitors already. Hopefully someone in DGMS saw the group text. Her moment of desperation imploded when she bolted out of the elevator and nearly bowled over Mr. Davidson, the Director of Operations. “I’m so sorry, sir!” she exclaimed.

The stern man began to shrug off the incident off and carry on with his business; unfortunately, it occurred to him who she was before they parted ways. “Ms. Kessler, you’re supposed to be at the contestant’s presentation,” he said. He watched Alex wilt as he continued, “Diana’s already in there with the competitors!”

“Yes, sir. I’m on my way to do the presentation with her right now,” Alex replied.

Mr. Davidson hummed and chewed his tongue. He sighed in frustration. “I hope you realize the importance of this project, Ms. Kessler! I can’t stress how much is riding on this event.”

“I do know,” Alex answered heatedly now that he was holding her up, “which is why I really have to go!” Before Mr. Davidson could say another word, she was halfway down the hall.

In record time, Alex found herself in front of the side doors of Auditorium Eight. She stopped only long enough to smooth her hair, which she hoped was not as frizzled as she felt, and entered the room. Thirty faces lined up in neat little rows turned to look at her.

Diana, the Head of Public Relations and lead on the grant project, glanced up from her notes on the podium screen and graciously introduced Alex as if nothing was amiss. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ms. Alex Kessler, the lead developer for the Dynamic Global Market Simulator used for this competition. She will be able to explain the technology in detail and answer any questions you may have about the DGMS system. Ms. Kessler, everyone.”

Alex forced a charming smile on her face and waved as she walked up to the stage to stand next to Diana. As Diana took her time changing the podium prompt, she covered the microphone with her hand before hissing, “What the heck, Alex?”

Alex flushed a little. “I’ll explain later,” she said through gritted teeth.

Alex took the podium and addressed the competitors. “Hello contestants. Thank you for being here for the first ever Franklin H. Martin Grant competition,” she opened briskly. The room of young men and women stared back at her intently. Normally, Alex would have been unnerved by the public speaking portion of this project. However after the morning she had, this was the first part of the day she was actually prepared for. She took a steadying breath as the opened her notes onto the podium feed. “The DGMS system, as Diana pointed out, stands for Dynamic Global Market Simulator. This technology has been designed for full immersion, as most modern simulators are. However, what makes the DGMS different is that it has been built from the ground up specifically to test how decision-making can affect global markets in real-time. As such, it uses real-time information from the TBITS Department of Data Analysis feed to provide immediate feedback projected from your own actions within the simulator. As each of you interact with your environment, the simulation will emulate the reactions across two-hundred-and-seventy different markets. This makes it both the most immediately accurate and dynamic market simulator to date.”

“Furthermore, as you make decisions and take action the program will record, react, and adapt to your methodologies and processes in order to feed this data back to the other competitors. This dynamic input of information is constantly altering and challenging the way in which each participant within the DGMS must make decisions and react, much like many of the video games of today. Also, the program stores all pertinent data from all players in the core system in order to provide the most comprehensive resource against each of your competitors. This technology is intended to be used in conjunction with real market analysis to measure the competency of major actions by TBITS and its clients—and be used to determine the competency of the participants relative to TBITS’s general practice standards.”

“That is where all of you come in! While this technology has been used and tested in-house extensively by business leaders, financial analysts, and technicians such as myself, this will be the first public operation of the DGMS system. For its maiden voyage, we have invited you all here in order to filter TBITS’s prospects for hiring the best of tomorrow’s business leaders today.”

Alex had to pause as the audience began applauding, much to her confusion. She watched as thirty of the most successful business students within TBITS jurisdiction looked up and clapped. She saw Mr. Davidson step into the room as her eyes tracked back down to the screen. Alex began again, “The Frederick H. Martin Grant Competition is not just an opportunity of a lifetime for you as promising candidates and future leaders; it is also an opportunity for us at TBITS to test some of our most advanced market algorithms against the greatest minds of the next generation and gives us an opportunity to seek out the newest talent in our rapidly evolving world. Therefore, DGMS technology promises to bring great opportunity to all of us as we combine the brightest thinkers of today into the learning experience of a lifetime. If any of you have any questions about the DGMS technology or the technical elements of the competition, feel free to ask your questions now.”

Immediately, about five hands shot up into the air. Alex pointed to a young man in the second row.

“Right, but, what are we actually supposed to do?”

The rest of the audience laughed mildly.

“Right…” Alex said as the young adults laughed again. “No, it’s a fair question. After the privacy conflicts back when you all were in diapers, some of the more invasive technologies aren’t used as much as they should be. If you haven’t used full-immersion simulation before, basically you get into a chair in a room. By thinking, you prompt the simulator to present on the wall any information or coding it determines to be relevant so that you may interact with it using your thoughts. Your first thought should be to visualize the current prices of stocks or commodities you want to invest in, or a map projection of any territories globally that you may trade with or within. From there, the whole interaction should feel rather intuitive. For the sake of the competition, TBITS’s published assets will be divided among the thirty competitors. If you ever get confused on how to proceed, looking up to the ceiling will manifest any keywords based on your recent thoughts.”

The audience sat quietly. Alex waited a moment before asking for more questions. She pointed to hand in the back row.

The young business student from the audience asked, “You mentioned several global markets. Will the interface feed data on all markets through a conscious mental feed or HUD?”

Alex quickly confirmed the data could be fed consciously and pointed to a young woman sitting near the door.

“How long is the competition expected to last based on in-house testing?”

Alex murmured a vague answer about no more than six hours then pointed to a serious looking man in the middle of the audience.

“You mentioned dynamically-fed data. Supposing a competitor made decisions with the intent to help another competitor, could the system detect these actions?”

Alex gave a short response of how these actions are anticipated, and making deals was the very point of the competition, but considering pro-social behavior as exploits was out of the purview of the DGMS since the pool of potential hires had been filtered so much already. Alex answered a few more basic questions before passing the podium back to Diana.

Alex acknowledged Mr. Davidson’s presence with a small nod before exiting the room and heading toward the elevator. The DGMS labs were just one floor down.

If Alex had any illusions that her team could function in her absence, she would have been a bit disappointed. She did find a few of the thirty simulation rooms prepared though. She gave her colleagues a short greeting before helping them complete the work, and she was pleased to see preparations go smoothly. After all, the last thing Alex needed was Mr. Davidson finding a problem with the DGMS on the company’s big day. Once that was done, Alex did a manual check of the critical systems and common faults. It was a rush job, but she was sure it was fine since the system was checked nightly. Full diagnostics were the last thing she ran last night.

As Alex headed to the DGMS break room, she noted that, despite everything, things were going alright. It was just she was walking past the elevator that Alex decided to go up and see if Diana would join her on a short break. She really wanted explain to Diana why she was so late. Alex thought, she has been all right while we’ve been working on this project together, and my absence must have put her in a terrible position.

It was just as Alex was passing an empty office that she heard Mr. Davidson talking within the room. Alex was not one to engage in office gossip or politics, but knowing his mood may prevent a formal reprimand. Alex pulled up her phone and pretended to check messages while she eavesdropped on the boss she had already irked once today.

“And the others too?” Mr. Davidson asked.

“Yes, sir,” a familiar male voice answered. “Everything has been set up, checked, and rechecked! I had plenty of time, thanks to you.”

Mr. Davidson let out a small chuckle, “Yeah, I don’t like calling in favors, but that woman is stubborn and resourceful. Having her run late was the best bet. Shame that we have to let her go after what she built.”

The other man scoffed. “HR insists there’s no way if we’re going to realize the potential of the DGMS. We don’t need her anymore, anyway. She has very limited range.”

Chilled, Alex turned back towards the elevator. The men’s voices started to emerge from the office. She walked as quickly as she could without sprinting. Just then, Alex saw Diana emerge from the ladies’ room. Alex ran to her friend and linked an arm through Diana’s. “Alex!” Diana exclaimed.

Alex gave Diana a nervous glance. “Please, just act like I’ve been with you,” she begged. The two walked in the direction Alex had just sprinted from.

Diana had only enough time to smile before Mr. Davidson and a serious-looking man came into the hallway. “Hello, Mr. Davidson!” Diana said. “I had not expected to see you until I had the mid-afternoon update.” Diana looked at the other man. “Oh, I didn’t know the two of you were acquaintances. Aren’t you one of the grant contestants?”

Both men smiled back. “What are you two ladies up to?” Mr. Davidson asked.

Diana turned at Alex before answering with a smile, “We were just headed to the break room and catching up.”

Mr. Davidson nodded. “Is that right? I was just looking for Ms. Kessler, and the employee app said that she was on this floor,” he said. He watched Alex for a moment before continuing. “Oh, this young man is Mr. Leonard. He is one of the grant candidates. He had a question about the DGMS.”

Alex was stunned that this man lied so easily. Alex tried to shake off her unease and introduce herself to the man who would probably be taking over her project by the end of the day. She attempted to smile and feign interest in his question, but it felt more like a grimace to her.

Mr. Leonard cleared his voice and gave a glance to Mr. Davidson. “Augment Implants, Ms. Kessler. I was wondering if the simulator was rated for them.”

Alex took a second to gather her thoughts. “Augment Implants? You mean AMIs?” she asked. She wondered if someone so young could still get augment implants. “Oh, yes, of course,” she replied. “Even though AMIs have fallen out of favor, and some break humanitarian and privacy laws in some sovereigns, all products TBITS produce for regular use are rated AMI-compatible as a safety precaution.”

“Ah, of course,” Mr. Davidson interjected. “Lucky for us that we ran into you here.” With that, Mr. Davidson bid farewell, claiming that they had to return to the brunch that was being held for the contestants.

When the two men left in the elevator, Diana was no longer in any mood for this. “What in the world was that, Alex? Davidson has AMIs, so how could he not know? What did you do to them?” she asked in a flurry.

Alex struggled to not burst into tears as she told Diana the entire chain of events starting from when she woke up this morning and ending with the conversation she had just heard.

Diana listened to whole story without an emotion crossing her face. Diana mumbled mostly to herself. “Leonard… Leonard… I know that name from somewhere. I believe it is the Department Head from Data Collection. Why would they want to keep you out of your office?”

Alex thought hard about the situation. “The only place I ever really spend any time is in the DGMS module! It is just a gaming program. I don’t see why I would be any kind of threat.”

Diana shrugged, unable to provide Alex with an answer. “Whatever it is, my advice to you is to mind your own business and keep your head down if you want to keep your job here.”

Alex nodded absently, still feeling bewildered. “Thanks for covering for me,” she said. “I was coming to apologize to you before all of that happened. I hope my tardiness didn’t put you in an awkward position.”

Diana smiled warmly and said to Alex teasingly, “Not at all! I’m glad that nothing worse happened to you. The weirdest things happen to problematic employees!”

Alex was troubled by that last statement. “With that in mind, I’m going to head back down to the DGMS lab to ensure that everything is still running smoothly. I don’t want any more problems today.”

Diana chuckled. “That sounds like a great plan!”

Slowly, Alex made her way back to the simulator lab as she tried to process everything. The cold, concrete walls could not contain the energy of the crowds of businessmen, entrepreneurs, and spectators who came to watch the competition on the direct feeds. The cheers and competition above echoed throughout the DGMS floor, but Alex was distracted. She knew that she had assured Diana that she would stay out of trouble, but despite the fact that she knew it was in her best interest, she could not leave it alone.

Alex sat at her station monitoring the progress of the grant contestants. Many were hovering right around the range that they should be at this point the competition. However, there was one just soaring above the rest by about sixty percent. “We have a shooting star,” she mused to herself whimsically. Her amusement only catalyzed the worries in the back of her mind though. We don’t need her anymore, anyway. She has a very limited range, she recalled. Before she even knew what she was doing, Alex was launching in-depth system checks, searching for some sign of unauthorized entry or tampering, but she found nothing. Everything was TBITS authorized and verified. Frustrated, she sighed. “There has to be a reason,” she muttered to herself.

It was then that she noticed something strange. The grant candidate in Room 12 would accumulate a large number of points at once, but rather than climbing to the lead the program kept averaging his points with all the other candidates keeping dead in the center of the rankings. When she thought about the alteration it was neither nefarious nor complicated. All that was really required was a slight change to the scoring codes in the program of that particular room. Tentatively, she clicked it to see if it was something she could easily correct. However, she was not surprised when her username and password were denied. “Leonard,” she growled softly to herself.

She knew this was the answer to everything, and her curiosity was piqued. As calmly as possible, she rose from her chair and made her way down the hall as if she was heading to the restroom, since Room 12 was in that direction. She casually strolled past the room glancing through the doorway as she turned into the restroom, and sure enough, Leonard was the occupant. He was most definitely immersed in the simulation. She washed her hands in case anyone was watching while she mulled over these knew revelations. What could they be up to? she asked herself.

Again, she passed the room on her way back to her lab. It was then that she remembered Leonard’s question about AMIs. The technology had long since been abandoned, so a question about AMI compatibility from someone below the age of forty was definitely strange. If Leonard had an AMI then he could be running any program that he wanted from his room, and she would have no way of figuring out exactly what that program did from her end. However, what she could do was eject Leonard from the simulation until she had a better idea of what the two men were doing. She picked up her pace as she made her back to her to her lab. She hesitated for only a moment while she thought about what Diana had said about inconvenient employees. She remembered that she was probably going to be fired either way. She could dress it up as an integrity issue within the scoring system explaining that she had noticed an error.

With a reckless abandon, she opened the details to the Room 12 simulation by way of a backdoor that she kept in all of her programs in case she found that her files had been tampered with. She let out a hiss in annoyance when she saw that her entry had tripped an alarm. She had to admit that Leonard was frustratingly good; not only had he managed to get into her system and alter her program without leaving a trace, he had also left a baited back entrance in case she figured out too much. She figured she could probably guess who had received that alert but she thought she had enough time to finish the task before she had company and some explaining to do.

Unfortunately, her calculations were off by a few seconds. She was just about to hit the enter key when Mr. Davidson and three security guards casually strolled into the room. “Good afternoon, Ms. Kessler! Hard at work I see?”

Alex tried to hide her unease, “I have some bad news, sir! It seems as if the scoring program in Room 12 has some sort of glitch in it.”

“Come now, Ms. Kessler, we both know that Mr. Leonard is in that room running a test on his own project. He is not harming the competition.”

Alex paused considering the admission before replying, “No, I wasn’t aware, Mr. Davidson! But perhaps I should have been, then I would not have been seconds from removing him from the simulation. What kind of project is he testing exactly?”

Mr. Davidson eyed her thoughtfully, “Mr. Leonard was been working on an algorithm that collects, learns, and projects creative thinking and problem solving probabilities for a couple of years now. He thinks he has finally worked out the program’s kinks, and he is currently using your program to gather the data necessary to test the latest version of the algorithm over the course of a long-term study.”

Alex pondered the implications of what her boss was telling her. “So, wait, you’re using my virtual reality game to gauge how these kids think and reason so that you can plug that information into an algorithm to see if you can accurately predict what they will do throughout their careers?” Alex blinked as she processed the information. “Why? I thought we wanted to ensure that the grant money reached the right hands so that future leaders could have an advantage to reach their goals.”

Mr. Davidson laughed a little to himself, “Diana is gifted with public relations, but no! I do not want to read about the successes of future leaders as our company falls behind. I want to be strategically ahead of them. This grant program will ensure that we have everything we need, and in a few years, it will be one of the most prestigious awards in the country, and the virtual simulation that you created will have graduate students lining up for a chance to compete with each other!”

Alex could not hide the look of disgust on her face, “That is creepily invasive and tortious interference!”

Mr. Davidson shook his head in disagreement. “We aren’t interfering in anything. We are simply beating our competition to the punch, so to speak!”

Alex crossed her arms across her chest and shook her head defiantly.

Mr. Davidson gave her a bemused look, “I can see we are not going to see eye to eye on this, Ms. Kessler, but that is of no consequence. As of today, TBITS will no longer require your particular expertise.” He turned to the security guards who had been standing idly by until that moment. “Please help Ms. Kessler collect her things and escort her from the building.”

Alex thought about putting up a struggle. Just simply leaning over and hitting the enter button, and ruining Leonard’s research. However, it was at that very moment that the simulator began to beep loudly. It was too late. The first winner of the Franklin H. Martin Grant had already won first prize. Feeling that the damage was already done, she followed the guards out of the room without making a fuss.

It had not been even fifteen minutes when she found herself back out on the sidewalk as the doors slammed closed behind her. She stood staring up at that building for a while, trying to decide on a proper course of action. She had never before noticed how intimidating the building looked from the sidewalk. It was just as she was about to take what she knew to the police, or the press, or anyone who would listen that her phone let out a couple of soft pings. The first was an alert about a money transfer to her account of $500,000. The second was an email.

She clicked it open and a brief video of her attacking Mr. Davidson as he tried to stop her from tearing apart the DGMS room flashed across the screen. The image was followed by a message that read:

To Ms. Alex Kessler:

This is email is to inform you that you are not longer an employee with Traditional Banking and Investment Technology Services. The company has wired you a severance package in the amount of $500,000. Please remember that upon your hire you signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Please be advised: Failure to honor this agreement will lead to aggressive prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

Thank you so much for your services and good luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Meredith Blossom

Head of Human Resources with TBITS

Alex opened and closed the email a few times, but the video feed did not reappear. However, she understood the message. Angrily, she threw her phone into the street where it was promptly run over by an automated taxi. Despondently, she turned away from the building and began the long trek home.

pencil

Michelle LaValley is thirty-two years old, and resides in a small town in Western Massachusetts. She lives with her boyfriend, Richard, and their two cats, Jack and Keenan. Email: Spigglez4[at]yahoo.com

Jon Meaders is twenty-nine, and lives in a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia. He lives with his brothers, niece, parents, and their dog and cat, Chopper and G. Email: joncmeaders[at]gmail.com

Mars

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Bronze
Anila Syed

Photo Credit: MudflapDC/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

“They used to put us to sleep for this you know!” the man says, jovially.

Elin does not like him. His breath smells of fish and his eyes look scared. She shrugs and moves away from him, to look out of the window at the unremarkable grey dawn.

The man shrugs, too, and directs his attention to the passenger on his right. “They used to put us to sleep for this, in the olden days,” he says, cheerfully.

The elderly woman jumps at the sudden sound, but they start to make stilted small talk.

This is not Elin’s first trip in a planetary shuttle. She was brought here from Mars twenty-six years ago, but obviously doesn’t remember that trip she made as a baby.

The man is thin and, unusually, wears dark clothes—against current trends. He has not shaved and is not even fluid enough to use permanent depilation. Elin is not planning on any interaction with her fellow passengers anyway.

The shuttle is tiny. Hardly the luxury liner she dreamt of when her company first told her about this trip. Trust Goo to provide an economy trip all the way to Mars. Her employers need someone to investigate the recent spate of terror which is sweeping the colonisation efforts. Idiot, demented, backward, mentally-challenged—however you like to see them—people, usually in their fifties and sixties, have started to disrupt the huge Starliners which take thousands of people off Earth to begin a new life on Mars.

‘Disrupt’ is such a strange word. It could mean ‘interrupt’ or it could mean, as in this case, ‘kill thousands of innocent individuals by blowing yourself up like some kind of uber drama queen.’ Elin cast that in her blog last week. She is proud of the wording and got nearly fifty-thousand upvotes for it. More upvotes equals more credits. Credits are what control your life, especially if you are a lifer.

She adjusts the camera and checks to see that her thoughts are being cast. Lifetime bloggers give up a “normal” private existence to broadcast their every waking thought to millions of adoring fans. Except the fan pool is shrinking by the day, as more and more people climb aboard the bandwagon.

Elin is Totally Connected—thanks to her employers—it’s not cheap. She is a Hot Spot and can broadcast live video and sound, and her surface thoughts are collated and sent to an editor at Goo headquarters. The editors don’t exactly change her content, but they make sure that she is not presented in a bad way. She is a valuable asset—until the next one comes along.

The man and woman, her neighbour passengers, have quietened down, finally. He is listening to headphones now and she has her eyes closed. He is listening to headphones. He had some in his bag and has plugged them into his seat somewhere. Elin nearly bursts out laughing, but decides to start sending an extremely long thought-stream to her cloud about how she has only ever seen headphones in old clips (bit of an exaggeration to be honest) and how even though the woman looks older than the man, at least she has a trans-spot in her neck. At least she is moving with the times. Go Grandma!

Elin glances at them and takes a couple of quick snaps for her blog.

The disruption is a strange thing really. Terrorist activity. Fundamental Remainers who don’t like to see human beings colonising other worlds. They believe in the sanctity of human creation—a woman who was trending last week said that she would rather see everyone dead than to go against God’s plan. She was just a saddo ranting against a Colonise Mars badge some kid was wearing on the AirBus. That story went viral in 5.2 hours.

But the main problem is, these nut jobs could be anyone, anywhere. No one really knows how to find them until they turn up with a big bucket of something and set it on fire—still the easiest way to kill people these days.

Some days Elin feels like she has ‘shock fatigue.’ It seems like every day there’s something—some old loony being caught or some sweet-looking old dear having her house raided. What won’t these guys do to stop us? There are traffic checkpoints everywhere. It has taken her nearly a week to get past Starport security. Her internal hard drive was checked for suspicious activity and her cortex was deep scanned for stray thoughts. We haven’t been blown up, yet at least, so everyone here must have passed the scans.

At one point last week, everyone over fifty had all their cameras permanently switched on—for every device they own. They now have no privacy in anything they do. Good. Any one of them might be plotting a terror attack. Actually, a thought strikes her, both of the people next to her must have their cameras activated. In fact, a quick look at everyone in the waiting lounge showed her that at least twenty percent of the people on board must be over fifty. It’s easy to tell, even with the rejuvenating treatments. Actually, easier to tell because of the rejuvenating products. That’s a bit too sarcastic for her. Elin guesses that will be edited out later.

“So, why are you going to Mars?” There’s a quick waft of fish and Elin turns to see the thin man peering at her. She’s jolted back from her thoughts. A little number in the bottom right of her screen tells her that around 35,000 people are watching her live feed. Some have started adding the little hearts already.

While her thoughts are carefully filtered, IRL she is trained to maintain brand @Elin. With so many watching, Elin has no option but to engage.

“Like, I’m off to go on a big explore!” she exclaims in her @Elin voice. “So many of my peeps can’t go to the, like, wonderful places I do, so I get to experience it all for them.”

“Oh!” The seated man’s eyes are metaphorically looking for the exits. “That’s great.”

[In reality, Goo are sending Elin so that her followers, who have quite a young demographic, can experience the direct fear related to interplanetary travel and terrorist activity. No one watches fiction anymore. This is the new way that the masses are fed their opioids. They’ve promised many credits, just for going—plus credits for upvotes.]

A red notice appears in the middle of her vision, flashes twice and fades away.

ASK HIM WHY HE IS GOING.

Without rolling her eyes, Elin politely says, “So, like, how ‘bout you?”

“I’ve been offered a job,” he says. “I’m going out to help run the ecodomes, you know, maintain an ecologically thermically-sound environment for all the residents, both new and existing.”

The man hasn’t even noticed that Elin has stopped listening. She’s actually been playing a viral clip about a kitten who gets wrapped in a ball of wool. The little fluffy grey kitten stares out of the wool carnage so innocently.

“…so it’s the pressure that makes it a harder job.”

Elin giggles at the kitten, but mentally crosses the man off the terrorist list. He is way too boring to be one. During the man’s explanation, twenty-thousand viewers switched her off. Six thousand new ones joined, but then they left, some sending her a puzzled emoji.

He has obviously stopped talking, so she turns her attention back to the window where the rocket is now ready for lift off.

They are very protected from their thunderous escape from the Earth. It’s surreal to watch the rocket’s storm blowing around outside their pod, while they sit shielded and serene within.

At least there have been no signs of terror on this rocket. Elin does not realise the release of tension would be so palpable. She can feel the blood begin to flow back into her arms and legs as her muscles relax. She is leaving Earth. She waits for an emotion, but nothing appears. Should she feel sad? Exulted? Mars is her place of birth. She is leaving Earth and going home. Her parents came back long ago. They were among the first pioneers, but after nearly three decades, they had decided it was not for them.

The passengers are allowed to feel a few moments of weightlessness before the anti-grav is switched on. It feels unpleasantly like being drunk. The famous sketch of the quote begins to play in her vision. Her cortex is scrabbling around to find things to calm her down. Or it could be her editors, who also monitor her vital signs, who are sending her comedy clips and little kittens being cute.

Oh no! Home videos have been dredged up from the beginning of her internal hard drive. Yellow alert! she thinks, jokingly, while watching a young Elin trying to drench her older brother with a garden hose.

The thin man, Mr. Boring, has nodded off, or passed out, or something. His elbow has spread over to her seat. Curse you, Goo and your Economy travel. They reason that the followers will feel more of a connection to their Followed if they can be as close to their lives as possible. Gone are the days when only the people with the luxury lifestyles and most beautiful looks became the super mega stars.

Elin pushes the man’s elbow back to his seat and surreptitiously sniffs her hand: fish. He moves, but stays asleep. In snatching a quick snap of the sleeping form with the caption ‘Fish man,’ Elin notices his neighbour—the little old lady—is staring at her quite crossly.

She is mouthing something. It is disconcerting to say the least. The transmission-spot in her neck is flashing like crazy. Her eyes are blue and faded, but shining brightly for all that, gouging circuits into Elin.

What is she saying?

Elin sends emergency msgs to her editors.

YOU GETTING THIS?

CRAZY LADY ALERT.

Her msgs go, but there is no receipt.

It is like the light has leaked from her eyes and is firing into the space around her face. All the while, her mouth moves, noiselessly, wordlessly.

In panic, Elin scrambles for the emergency button. They just showed her this half an hour ago in the safety clip. Where is it?

She tries to shake the man. He is out cold.

Realisation spreads into her brain, slowly, trying all the ports until something understands. People around her are lying unconscious.

“Stop it!” she commands the woman. Her voice is a thin and soft squeak.

“Stop!” She holds her arm up above her face to shield herself from those eyes.

The old woman is a terrorist. It can be anyone around you. At any time they can turn into a devil. There are half a million people watching this now. Elin does not even have this many followers in this diluted gene pool she now inhabits.

KEEP LOOKING AT THE WOMAN

What? This is the command from the editors after all this time and all this danger?

Reluctantly, she lowers her arm.

ASK HER WHAT SHE WANTS

There is a scream in Elin’s throat which won’t move. There may be words behind it, who knows?

But before she can sort out her vocal intentions, the woman’s words become coherent.

“All will die,” she says.

And she keeps repeating it. Over and over. All will die.

Elin’s panic has paralysed her, half with her hand on the sleeping fish man and her other hand, lowered into a clenched fist in her lap.

All will die, all will die, all will die.

She now knows who will die and when. The passenger pod that they are in has been rigged with an atomic weapon. Separating from the rocket will trigger the countdown and by the time they reach Mars’ orbit…

She can feel the information drilling through her firewall. The handhold she has always felt as her editors since she went online feels weak, ephemeral, far away.

All will die. Yes, that’s right. All must die. Elin shakes her head, but this lets the new, upgraded-her establish itself.

Colonisation is a doomed project. Humans have ruined Earth and are now running away, like a kid who breaks a window and runs off. Going to another planet will do the same, and by then, they will spread off-world to another, and another.

No! A faint voice inside her pleads. Please, stop this!

We are strong. We are many. We are the sure-fast holders of the fate of humanity. When you join us, you will see reason. You will be shown the light and you will know.

Elin has read their propaganda, of course she has, but getting it implanted into her brain lets her see the truth for what it is. Of course!

Elin sees her life for what it has been. The little old lady’s eyes have stopped glowing, but instead they look quite red and sore. She has stopped saying, ‘All will die.’

Now she’s saying, ‘You are the one.’

ELIN, YOU ARE THE ONE.

Yes, Elin knows she is the one. She must return to save her home from the infestation of mankind. She is still emitting her life to the hordes watching on earth. There are millions of them now. She starts to get feeds from news stations, hundreds upon hundreds try and fail to hack her input. Her head reels from the sudden onslaught as images appear one after another. When that does not work, news feeds start to send her snippets of the news:

‘The Cosmic Shuttle has been hijacked by a lifer known as @Elin.’

‘The twenty-six-year-old is reported to have been born on the Red Planet and was thought to be going back to visit her homeworld.’

HELP ME!

The tiny part of Elin’s own being is dying. She will be the first casualty in the Cosmic explosion.

Elin can see a miniscule sub-routine has started to spread inside her brain and take over her thinking. In a strange way, she guesses that this sub-routine must have been implanted into her on Mars. It is working its way towards her motor cortex where it will give her further instructions.

Desperately, she tries to strengthen her firewall, using the emergency codes she was taught after her implanting was complete. If she can buy some time, maybe she can—

She can what?

You are the one.

You are the one.

“I’m not the one!” Elin hears her voice screaming. Her throat is raw with the strength of the sound.

“I AM NOT THE ONE!”

She must stand up and go to the nose of the pod. There are no pilots. There is no cabin crew. The pod disengages and is pushed towards Mars. Everyone on this shuttle is going to stay there. Elin will go to the front and place her hand on a small panel situated under the first seat of the pod. From this small action, the countdown will begin.

The human race is useless. They are a cancer, and spreading throughout the solar system will only help to spread the disease.

The news feeds are now showing her people standing in the streets. Someone has made an effigy like a big scarecrow and printed her face and stuck it on. She sees placards with her name flash briefly past.

Thousands will die.

Elin?

The sound is faint, but the strength of the bond makes it heard above all the noise.

Elin comes to her senses and finds that she has been walking along the aisle of the shuttle pod, in a nightmare daze.

Elin, listen to me.

It’s her father. “Elin, your mother and I love you.”

They are using her personal channel. Elin remembers the joking and leg-pulling she got when she had first told them about this personal comms channel that she had asked for. Only her family members had the password.

“We don’t want to see any rude stuff!” her mother had joked.

“Mum!”

“Well, you know, I don’t want to see you asleep, or on the—”

“Mum!”

Blushing all round.

“Elin, can you hear us? Your mother and I love you very much. Whatever it is you’re into, come home, love. Let’s talk it out.”

Tears are streaming down Elin’s face. She can hear sobs leaving her body. She knows she is the trigger for this atom bomb.

Her legs feel like lead.

“Elin, we know this is not you,” her mother says.

“You’ve been hacked. Your boss from Goo is here, Elin. He is going to talk to you, OK?”

“Elin!” Steve sounds strained, like he does when she’s dropped the F-bomb in her livestream and he is trying to stay calm.

“Elin, listen to me, honey, your ratings are through the roof. Keep going—“

But whatever he is about to say is drowned. Elin pictures her father wrestling him to the ground, his large hands over Steve’s rat-like face.

“Elin, I’m going to read from the manual, OK?” Mum’s telephone voice. She is aware of the watching world.

“I’m going to shut you down, OK, honey bun?”

She starts to read out Elin’s emergency shutdown codes. There are so many to get through, but Mum perseveres.

She’s at the end of page one. Elin feels her own will draining from her body. She feels like she has been in a very hot bath and now the water is draining away, leaving her heavy and useless.

Her mother is crying now, as she reads out the final set of codes.

No one. No one has ever been shut down like this before. It took sixteen years to legislate the backdoor codes and fail-safe mechanisms to prevent this kind of man-jacking. But, no one knows what will happen when that last code is read.

“Mummy,” Elin says, with the last of her sentient breath.

“I love you.”

Mum is sobbing: “5… 6… 3… K.”

She finishes reading.

Elin is lying on the floor, arm stretched towards the panel, her fingers reaching for the lock.

pencil

Anila Syed has been writing and reading sci-fi all her life. Email: syedab[at]totalise.co.uk

Project Savant

Posted on by

Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Silver
Erin McDougall

Photo Credit: Classic Film/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

“Very good, Monsieur Savant. I can tell you’ve worked hard on your irregular verbs.”

As I mark the current question correct, I note with pride the neat row of consecutive red check marks in the margin of the test paper. We’re nearly finished his Level 3 Language Exam and he’s yet to make a single mistake. He’s only one answer away from achieving a perfect score in both correct grammar and vocabulary usage, the main objective of his course. I almost tell him this but I stop at the last moment; he’s so close, I don’t want him to suddenly become self-conscious and second-guess himself.

“We’re almost finished the exam,” I say instead, working to keep my voice neutral. It’s always been difficult for me to maintain a calm telephone demeanor when a student’s full potential is within their reach. This is especially true for a student who’s worked as hard as Monsieur Savant. Three months ago, he could barely understand anything other than the very basics of English: Hello, how are you? I’m fine. And you?

I adjust the receiver to my other ear and clear my throat before I read out the question. “Please put the following words into a complete sentence, with the correct usage of the present perfect tense, in the third person: He/She/burn/toast.”

There’s a brief pause on the line and then Monsieur Savant responds, with complete confidence:

“‘She has burnt the toast again.’”

I don’t even bother to verify my answer key. It just sounds perfect. I’m about to tell him so but he’s not finished.

“The verb ‘to burn’ has two possible past participles, no? Burnt and burned,” he says, exaggerating his pronunciation to emphasize the difference between the ‘t’ and the ‘ed’ sounds of the two conjugations.

“Could you not also say: ‘He has burned the toast again’?”

He’s right, of course. I shouldn’t be surprised he knows both possibilities. “Yes, absolutely. Both answers are correct!”

“I changed the pronoun to ‘he’ because a man can make his own toast, and burn it just as well.” He lets out a short mechanical chuckle, a brief blip in his intense focus.

“I can’t argue with that,” I laugh. I can’t help but marvel at how far he’s come from those first few painful lessons. His improvement has been remarkable, like the flick of a switch. Now he’s even making jokes.

“Congratulations, Monsieur Savant, the exam is complete and you have scored 100%!” I don’t even bother to hide my enthusiasm. Witnessing this kind of success is one of the real joys of my work as a language educator in Paris.

“Thank you. Any success of mine is due solely to your teaching. And to your patience, Miss Amelia Rogers.” No matter how much he’s improved, I can’t seem to get him to stop calling me by my first and last name.

“You did the hard work. You should be very proud.” I scribble his final score on the test paper and tuck it inside his file. A quick glance at the clock dims my spirits; this is his last lesson and it’s almost over. I’m going to miss working with him. He seems to genuinely enjoy learning. I wish I could say the same for all my students, predominantly other French professionals and government employees. Many of them prefer to use their telephone lessons as an outlet to air their grievances towards everyone and everything in their professional lives: their departments, their colleagues, the upper management, the labor unions, the Président.

But not Monsieur Savant.

He is always so pleasant, even when a concept is difficult or frustrating, and always diligently prepared. His lesson is a bright spot in my often dull schedule of drilling verbs and trying to draw conversations out from people with little to no interest in learning English. I’m dreading the next few hours of telephone lessons. It’s going to be a very long day of sitting alone in this tiny room, staring at these bare white walls or out the window into the drab parking lot, speaking with bored, expressionless voices on the other end.

“I know our time is nearly over,” he says, reading my mind. “I would like to say now how much I have appreciated speaking with you. Your help, your guidance, has been extraordinaire—forgive me, extraordinar-y.” He corrects himself followed by another of his reflexive chortles.

“It’s been a real pleasure,” I say, wishing we had another ten minutes to chat instead of only two. I shift in my seat, trying to get comfortable in this hard wooden chair. “I wish you all the best in your work—”

“Work is very difficult now.” He cuts across me, his voice low. He’s speaking with an urgency that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Time is short and I am more and more concerned… perhaps frightened even. I wish I could tell you, Miss Amelia Rogers. I think your perspective would be very helpful to me. And—ah, comment dire… comfortable? No, sorry… a comfort.”

I’m startled; this is the most I’ve ever heard about his work.

Only the briefest, most general descriptions of what he does, along with a signed confidentiality statement from his upper management have been provided, all quite typical for students from research and development in the Ministry of Defense. Any questions I asked him about how his day was or what he was working on were always met with standard, non-specific answers: Work is very busy. I have many meetings this week. Projects are progressing.

He’s never shared any details about anything, least of all how he feels about his work. Now he’s using words like difficult, concerned, frightened… I sit up straighter and lean in closer to the receiver.

“I’m sorry to hear that…” I offer, not sure what else to say, much like the time a student went on a rant about his very complicated divorce and every other word was a nasty French curse. The alarm on my mobile phone starts to screech, signalling the end of this lesson and making me jump. It’s buried under papers and books. I scramble to find it.

“What is that sound?” Savant asks.

“It’s my timer. I’m afraid I have to say goodbye now,” I stall as the phone blares on in the background. I finally tug it out from under the stack of student files and silence it with one swift swipe. “Thank you, Phone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, it’s a silly habit I picked up from my husband,” I babble, embarrassed to be explaining this. “He always thanks our devices when they beep at us so when the robot uprising happens, they’ll remember we were kind to them and hopefully spare us.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Monsieur Savant declares after a long pause. He’s a good sport to go along with my joke. “We live in difficult times and one must always be aware.”

“Er—yes… well, we are firm believers that being polite can save lives,” I quip, trying to keep the tone light but I sense a shift and it’s making me uneasy. Considering the difficult times we live in…? How did this conversation take such a weird turn?

There’s a sudden blast of static noise and the high-pitched squeal as though a fax line were cutting into our connection. I grimace and hold the receiver away from my ear for a second. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“There is interference,” Savant says over the crackling line. “I must go. Goodbye, Miss Amelia Rogers.”

“Goodbye, Monsieur Savant.” I wait for his little chirp of a laugh but it doesn’t come. Instead, all I hear is silence followed by the drone of the dial tone as the other line goes dead.

*

The following day is chaos.

Commuting via Paris’s metro system is never without its challenges—full trains, crowded platforms, delays due to unclaimed bags left in the stations—but an entire new set of disruptions have popped up overnight.

Some metro lines are shut down. New signs declare the trains En Panne/Out of Order and no other information is given to confused and stranded passengers.

The delays are exacerbated as every person must now open his or her bag, show proper transit validation and present their ID to the new security at every entrance and on every platform. There’s no getting around it and those who try are immediately detained. The atmosphere is tense, with the occasional outburst from the impatient crowd. No one seems to know what provoked this new system, or at least no one is telling us why.

I’m stuck in a throng of people at the Montparnasse station. I’m late for work but so is everyone else. I stand on my tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd as it surges towards the waiting train.

“Pardon,” says a man as he bumps into me. He speaks French with a distinct English accent.

I place a steadying hand on his arm as we struggle to maintain our balance. “You speak English? Do you know what’s going on?”

He pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and plays me a video of what looks like a protest outside of a train station. The video is shaky and of poor cellphone quality, but I can see gendarmes in full protective gear brandishing batons and shields as they push through the crowd. Some of the people are struck down but the crowd keeps pressing forward until one of the officers, who is bigger than any soldier I’ve ever seen, picks up one of the people in the mob and lifts him high above the crowd. The man is thrashing and kicking at the soldier, who then starts to shake the man violently. His body is a blur on the tiny screen and some people in the small group huddled around the man and I gasp. We all watch, with sickening dread, as the soldier then tosses the limp man aside. The video cut off after that.

“Where was that?” demands a young woman, one of the small crowd now watching the video.

The man looks grim. “It’s not clear but I think it’s Gare du Nord. It’s making the rounds on social media but I have yet to hear of anything on the news.”

“Nothing? How is that even possible?” The woman shakes her head, her eyes blazing. “It’s as if it isn’t happening!”

I don’t know what to say. My head is swimming with the image of the man being thrown in the air like he was nothing but a rag doll when the hordes around us jostle our little group apart. The man with the video is swallowed up into the crowd when I reach the front near the train.

“Identification, Madame!” the officer barks at me. A team of security officers are shouting into their walkie-talkies behind him.

The whole situation is unnerving. My heart is pounding so loud I’m sure he can hear it as I fumble in my bag for my ID. He studies it for what feels like an eternity before he finally lets me pass onto the train. I’m barely inside when the doors snap shut behind me. The train is packed with people wearing the same bewildered expression I know is etched on my face. I’m not the only one who breathes a long sigh of relief as the train eventually pulls away.

We live in difficult times… one must always be aware…

Monsieur Savant’s words from yesterday loop through my mind as the train picks up speed. I can’t stop thinking of how right he seems to be.

*

When I finally reach the office, I’m surprised to find it empty except for Isabelle, the receptionist, and one lone student, a man I’ve never met before. None of my other colleagues are anywhere to be seen.

“Amelia! I didn’t expect you to come in today!” Isabelle exclaims, as I stumble in slightly disheveled but otherwise unscathed. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, just a bit overwhelmed by the crowds.” I drop my bag and collapse into a chair in the waiting area. It’s taken me over three hours to get to the office and I’m exhausted. Isabelle brings me a cup of water, which I immediately guzzle.

“I haven’t been able to get cell reception and now my phone is dead; what’s going on out there?” I ask her when I can speak again.

She bites her lip and shifts her weight nervously from foot to foot. “It’s not clear but it appears there was some sort of attack at Gare du Nord and possibly Hotel de Ville, but it’s not yet confirmed.”

Another attack?! How many other people have been brutalized today?

Isabelle narrows her eyes and makes a small head jerk towards the man behind her. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me since I arrived.

“He has been waiting here all morning to see you. I told him I doubted you’d be coming in, what with all the delays… but he insisted. He says it’s urgent.” She nods to him and he comes over to me, his hand outstretched.

It’s freezing cold when I grasp it but I say nothing. Who is this man and what does he want with me?

“’Allo Miss Amelia Rogers,” he says in a voice I just heard in my head not very long ago. “I am Monsieur Savant.”

My mind is one step behind and it takes me an extra second before I understand that although I feel like I know him well from our lessons, he is nothing like I expected. He is enormously tall, over six and a half feet, with broad shoulders and a short, thick neck. His steel grey suit coordinates flawlessly with his short fringe of salt and pepper hair. He would be handsome if it weren’t for the flicker of menace behind his dark blue eyes and the way his towering frame looms over me. There is nothing in his glowering stare or his steel-trap handshake of the warm, pleasant man I met on the telephone.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you,” he says. “I know this must be very alarming for you. I will explain everything, I promise. But I must speak with you in private.” He gestures towards an open meeting room. I sense I have no choice but to go with him; it feels like more of an order than an ‘after you.’ He closes the door behind us with such force, I jump.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he says. “I’m not used to in-person conversations outside of work. I will try to remember what you’ve taught me.” His words are kind, but I wince at how loud he’s speaking. He notices my discomfort and sits down first. He pulls a thick folder from his suit jacket and slides it across the table towards me.

“What—?”

He silences me with a shake of his head and taps the folder. “No, please look at this first. It’s the only way I know how to begin.”

I flip open the folder as though I expect it will explode at my touch. Inside are spreadsheets, designs, and specifications for something called “Projet Savant,” a line of government-issued artificial intelligence agents. Their primary mandate is peacekeeping operations. The man sitting opposite me is the same man whose photograph is stapled to the inside cover of the folder, the same man who all the agents in Projet Savant resemble.

Monsieur Savant is an android.

“For the past three months, my new language acquisition program has been undergoing extensive testing. My programmers have been monitoring how it adapts to different linguistic structures, syntax, grammar, vocabulary while I have been learning English from you.”

The designs and specifications are dancing in front of my eyes as he goes on, explaining my role in this aspect of his training. All those moments he struggled with irregular verbs and pronunciation were actually his neural algorithms adjusting coefficients to match the new input. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, so I shut my eyes to the tangled mess of numbers and letters and try to just focus on his voice.

If I just listen to him speak, it almost makes sense.

“This morning, there was a training exercise at Gare du Nord with some of the other agents in Projet Savant. That location was chosen for its proximity to some of the areas in Paris most affected by the recent influx of refugees and those who oppose their presence. I objected to the operation. I didn’t believe we were ready to go out in the field; I felt we were moving too quickly with integrating the agents with the human police force. I even tried to tell you about my fears yesterday, but of course, I could not. But I was overruled and the operation went forward. Unfortunately, when the crowds became hostile, it triggered a tactical mode in the agents present. Now the agents are outside of the government’s control and the ramifications are, shall we say, very, very serious.”

He turns over his left hand and presses his right thumb into the centre of his enormous palm, transforming it into a small screen. He taps the screen and it springs into action, playing the same incident I watched on a cellphone this morning. It’s shot from another angle, and the video quality is better: high resolution and less shaky. The biggest difference—from our table in one of the quiet classrooms of my language school—is I can also hear the audio of dozens of subtly robotic voices repeating over and over:

« Cessez et désistez! Cease and desist! We repeat, put down your weapons! Déposez vos armes! We mean you no harm! Aucun mal! Cease and desist! »

But the crowd doesn’t listen and I watch in horror as a man from the crowd screams obscenities at the “Robo-Terroriste!” and uses a Taser on the agent in front, who freezes for a moment as the electrical current takes hold, then seizes the man and lifts him in the air.

I don’t want to see the agent throttle him again, so I shut my eyes. But I can hear everything: the screaming from the crowd, the wailing of the agents’ sirens as they switch from peacekeepers to brutalizers, the bystanders’ cries of panic and fear. Monsieur Savant taps his palm once more and the screen goes dark. His hand is normal again, three times the size of my husband’s hand, but only a hand once more.

“That’s truly awful, Monsieur Savant,” I whisper. “I’m sorry that happened to your fellow agents. But I don’t know why you came to me. What do you want from me?”

“You told me yesterday you and your husband treat machines with kindness so when they show their evil natures, you will be spared.” He raises his head and fixes his steel eyes on mine. But as I return his gaze, I see them soften and fill with sadness. “Do you believe this of all androids? Are we inherently mistrusted and deemed guilty until proven innocent?”

My stomach plummets as I hear my own ignorance reflected back at me and I understand now how damaging that ignorance can be. Now I have a chance to set it right. I take a deep breath and lock eyes with Savant, the first android I’ve ever spoken to.

“My husband makes that joke to bring levity to a subject that most people don’t even consider taking seriously, but that’s not productive. I see that now and I apologize.”

The importance of what I say in this moment is weighing on me but I sense I’m on the right track as he holds my gaze and nods at me to continue.

“We believe that as technology becomes more intelligent, it also has the capacity to become more aware. And anything with the potential for awareness—human or other—is deserving of respect.”

He sits perfectly still as my words linger in the air. He doesn’t need to breathe but he lets out a long exhale and he extends his hand to me again. The light behind his eyes starts to flicker and his hands seize up.

“There’s so little time now… the program termination sequence is underway…” His eyes flicker faster and his neck starts to twitch.

It’s a second before I understand what he said and what it means.

“No! Can’t you shut it down? There must be something you can do!” I grab his hands and try to steady them but their shaking too much. His speech is cutting out every other word and his eyes are nearly dark. The sequence is too far gone.

“Miss Amelia Rogers, I must ask for your help one final time.”

“Yes, tell me!”

Somehow he steadies his hands long enough so his right index finger can trace a circle around his left palm. A small disc ejects itself from under his skin. He presses it into my hand and clasps it with his own. The shaking starts to subside and his eyes, dimming with every passing second, lock with mine. His voice is fading but he forces the words out.

“Share this footage. Spread it as far as you can. And speak your message of tolerance and belief in the potential of all beings. If enough people hear it, then maybe there’ll still be a chance for Project Savant or those who come after us…”

Just as with our last lesson, all I hear is silence as our connection is broken.

pencil

Erin McDougall is an educator, dancer, writer, proud Canadian and great lover of life. She taught dance, drama and English in Canada and she is currently teaching English as a Second Language in Velizy-Villacoublay, France. She is also an avid blogger, sharing her favorite sandwich ideas and tips with Sandwiches are Beautiful, documenting her adventures in dance, theatre, art and culture with A Dancer Abroad. Erin plans to continue pursuing her life-long passions for dance, theatre and creative writing while exploring the cultural playground of Europe. Email: eamcdougall[at]gmail.com

Not If We Lie

Posted on by

Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Gail A. Webber

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr (CC-by)

“There you are. Rise and shine, malyshka.”

Gwen heard the deep male voice close to her. Little girl in Russian? My Kyril. The sudden nausea separated her from the dream and forced reality on her. She tried to focus. This wasn’t as bad as recovering from hypersleep, but in hypersleep you didn’t dream so it was easier to let go of it. The kind of metabolism-damping Mission Control was using on the crew for this run—metabosleep, they called it—was supposed to be easier on the body, but it was hell on the psyche. When you slept for a month, the dream world became your alternate life, and often it seemed better than your real one. How many times have I done this? Is this my fiftieth turn to be awake? No, more than that I think. It was hard to keep track. Once she got to her cubicle, she’d look up how many times she’d been awake so far this trip and record one more.

She forced her eyes open and saw Kyril’s handsome face. His dark eyes held genuine affection for her, but she understood he wasn’t “my Kyril” from the dream. Gwen tried to speak: “Everything…” Her voice squeaked and broke as it often did after not using it for so long, so she swallowed and tried again. “Everything’s okay? On board? No trouble?”

Kyril extended his hand to help her out of the sleeping pod. “We’re all fine. Getting some interesting dark matter data, and collected unusual micrometeoroids yesterday. Of course, we’re closer to the target than when you went into your pod—closer by the minute—but the Commander estimates we’re still months away. Other than that, just the usual drama.”

There were twelve crew members aboard the spaceship, though it only took four to maintain the ship in flight. For a number of reasons, Mission Control didn’t want to keep the same four people awake for too long, so they scheduled a rotation: eight rested in metabosleep and four were awake at any given time, new combinations rotating in four-to-six-week intervals.

Gwen removed her hand from Kyril’s and blushed. In her dreams two sleep cycles ago, she and Kyril had become lovers. But since metabosleep dreams were more real than any normal one, the experience felt like reality even now that she was awake. The smell of their lovemaking and perfume of the star magnolia in their backyard, the taste of the mint tea he made her every morning, the texture of his beard in all stages of growth, all were part of her memory and didn’t fade as normal dream memory did. Even the pains of childbirth and subsequent exhaustion of caring for a newborn on very little sleep—experiences she’d never known outside of dreams—would be as authentic for her as real-life memories. Just now when she’d awakened, her arms felt the weight of their baby daughter she held, their second child after returning home from this mission—or so it was in the dream. In real life, life on this spaceship life, they weren’t lovers. But they’d been good friends since the mission began.

He winked. “Any good dreams to share, daragaya?”

It was as if he was reading her mind, and Gwen suddenly wondered if he’d had similar dreams of her. No, of course not. She remembered his touch and blushed again. “I think I’ll keep them to myself. Hey, wouldn’t Joe be jealous if he knew you called me your dear one?”

“Don’t you worry, precious girl. Joe will sleep for another two weeks, and even if you tattle on me when he wakes up, by that time I’ll be in a sleep cycle. Then it’ll be two rotations before we’re up at the same time again, and he’ll either have forgotten, or it won’t matter.” Kyril wrinkled his nose and sighed. “I hate this staggered waking schedule.”

“Me too. And I don’t have a relationship to maintain.” She thought about the one she had for a while with Charlie McGeehan. He was one of the mission pilots, as blond and light-skinned as Kyril was swarthy, with hazel eyes that saw into a person’s soul. She was sorry it didn’t work out between them, but accepted it as the way things sometimes went. Maybe someday.

“Four of us mobile at any given time, but on staggered schedules so the fours are constantly shuffled. I guess the shrinks at Mission Control wanted us interacting with eleven other people instead of only three,” she said. “As if contact with eleven people is enough for what could be the rest of our lives.” That was what they’d all been told. The mission involved too many variables to guarantee a safe return, but each of them believed finding this new life form that was sending signals to Earth from somewhere in the Kuiper Belt was a goal worth the risk. Whatever the life form was, everyone wanted to believe it was macroscopic, intelligent, and benevolent.

“I understand the reasons for the schedule, but it’s a shame we can’t arrange for some people to sleep the whole trip. And I don’t mean Joe.”

“Stephen?” It was a question for which she already had the answer. Gwen couldn’t understand how that man had managed to hide his true feelings and opinions during the extensive screening all the candidates endured. And there was no way he could have misunderstood mission goals, but once they were on their way, he’d taken every opportunity to rail against the idea of contacting new life. He condemned humans for exterminating so many Earth species, and insisted that was what would happen to the new life forms. Humans would kill them all, intentionally or otherwise. At one point, she heard him say they had an obligation to sabotage the ship, if necessary, rather than risk exterminating extraterrestrial creatures. He claimed their extermination was inevitable.

“Yeah, Stephen. He’s been talking this shit since we started, but every rotation I see him, he seems worse.”

“We should medicate him,” she said, stretching her arms overhead. “Maybe a dose of really good drugs is all he needs. So, who else is up now? You, me, Stephen and who else?”

“Charlie,” said Kyril.

As their pilot for this rotation, Charlie held the rank of Commander.

Charlie, she thought. Wonder if we could have made it as a couple under other circumstances? But all she said was, “Good, Stephen likes him.” Charlie’s cool logic and sense of calm hadn’t yet been enough to quiet Stephen’s ranting, but there was always hope.

“He likes you too, you know—Stephen, I mean. Anyhow, I’m not sure Charlie’s calm influence is enough of a solution. But we can try.” He offered his arm as if they were about to dance. “Come, lisichka. We can talk more about all this in a bit. Right now, let’s get you to the med bay for a post-sleep assessment.”

“I’m fine, but why did you call me a little fox?”

“That red hair, of course. Even in a crew cut, you’re adorable! As for your exam, I’m sure you’re fine but, you know, regulations. Once I give you your gold star, we’ll get you some coffee. After that, you and I get to spend some quality time together in the lab.” He waggled his eyebrows and leered playfully.

She laughed. “I’ll pass on the star, but yes, coffee. Please!”

The lab work they began that morning, examination of the micrometeoroids Kyril had removed from the ramjet hydrogen collectors, would take a few days. Already, they’d found elements so far unknown on Earth, and hoped to find microorganisms of some sort, though that was a longshot. Kyril’s knowledge of geology and Gwen’s of microbiology were both useful. Those weren’t the only fields in which they were qualified, but then everyone who landed a seat on this mission had diverse training, as well as multiple talents and specialties.

Since it was hard to predict what knowledge and skills would be necessary on an extended voyage like this, each individual had to wear many hats. Of course there were computer resources on board, and contact with Earth was possible, but the delay of communication in both directions complicated the latter option. The team aboard this spacecraft had to be both independent and interdependent.

With the lab shipshape and work for the next day staged, Gwen and Kyril headed for the mess hall. Contact among crew members was not only encouraged, but required. Three times a day, the four astronauts on duty met in the mess hall to eat together, SOP unless circumstances dictated otherwise. Occasionally, the conversations amounted to little more than briefings, but more frequently they were filled with joking and teasing as well as the sharing of thoughts, fears, and comments on the food.

When Kyril and Gwen arrived, Charlie was already seated but hadn’t gotten his meal. Gwen hugged him, Kyril kissed him on both cheeks.

“No Stephen yet?” Kyril asked.

Charlie moved his head around until his neck cracked. “Haven’t seen him all day. You?”

“Da. When I settled Lena in her sleep pod, right before I woke Gwen, he waved to me in B Corridor. Looked like he was headed for the computer bay.”

“He’s good at everything he does,” Charlie said, “and he hasn’t shirked a single duty, but I’m not sure what to think about his diatribes. I mean, he has a point about all the species we’ve lost on Earth, but he takes it too far. And he knows he’s supposed to meet with everybody for dinner. So where is he?”

“Did you call him?”

“Shouldn’t have to.”

“I will,” said Gwen, and keyed her wrist communicator. “Hey, Stephen, it’s Gwen. Join us in the mess hall?” Silence. “Stephen, you there?” She shrugged and sat down. “You don’t think he could be in trouble? Hurt or something?”

Kyril shifted in his chair and looked into the galley. He was hungry.

“In his rack, I bet. Seems like he’s sleeping more than usual.”

“Hmm. Think that’s significant?” Charlie asked. “Depression, maybe? I reviewed Ron’s log from last rotation.” Ron had been the pilot before Charlie’s present duty.

“And?” Gwen asked.

“People were talking about Stephen then, saying they thought he was getting worse even though he was in metabosleep at the time. A few seemed to be taking Stephen’s side, but not to the point of suggesting we turn back, or scrub the mission, or any of Stephen’s other crazy ideas.”

“So it’s not just us.”

“Apparently not.”

Kyril stood up. “Nu, let’s start without him. I’ve been looking forward to that chicken cacciatore all afternoon.”

“Afraid it’s nothing like Mama used to make,” laughed Gwen.

While everyone ate, Charlie had questions, and questioning was one of his talents. He could be asking about your deepest secret yet sound as if he wanted to know what color apples you preferred or who your favorite baseball player was. “So, any idea what might have caused the pressure drop in Airlock #2? It looked significant.”

Recognizing the official nature of the question despite Charlie’s congenial tone, Kyril answered, “No idea, Commander. The pressure read normal by the time I got there, so I turned off the alarm. When I checked the sensors, they registered perfect.”

Charlie pursed his lips and stared straight ahead as if reading something no one else could see. Then he grunted and waved his hands as he spoke. He always did that. “That makes no sense. Either the pressure was too low or the sensors registered it wrong—it couldn’t be anything else. Could someone have used the airlock? Opened it and then closed it? Wait, was #2 the one you used to retrieve the micrometeoroids from the collectors?”

“Nyet. Went out #1, and came back in the same way.”

Gwen swallowed of piece of brownie, savoring the chocolate and thanking God that Mission Control had found a way to successfully freeze chocolate. It was one of the few things as good in shipboard life as it was in dreams. “Who ran your tether?”

“Stephen.” Kyril laughed and touched his front teeth. “Uh, you’ve got chocolate in your teeth. Quite a fetching look. Seriously, he did everything right. We both suited up, and he waited for me in the airlock in case anything went wrong.”

“Good to hear, I have to admit,” Charlie said.

Gwen finished working her tongue around her mouth and showed Kyril her teeth. When he nodded, she said, “Commander, could we—or should we—wake one of the people with more psychiatric credentials than the three of us have?”

Kyril threw the biscuit he was eating onto his plate. “Screw that. If we’re worried about what he’s up to, we should put him down early.”

“Don’t say it that way.” Gwen punched his shoulder. “Putting down is what you do for an old dog so it doesn’t suffer.”

“Well, if the shoe fits…” Kyril said.

“Stop it, you two. We’re charged with maintaining the planned crew rotation except for serious illness or injury.”

Kyril shook his head. “That’s a rule for normal situations, Commander. A crew member threatening to murder everybody if they don’t do what he says isn’t normal. You heard him at dinner last night, he said that somebody could use a pulsed laser diode through a fiber-optic cable to detonate the solid fuel in the rockets.”

“And you thought he was serious?” Gwen asked. “Sometimes he makes strange jokes, and you know he’s got an odd sense of humor. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“To my mind, he gave way too much detail for a joke. It doesn’t matter if you laugh when you suggest we either scrub the mission or ‘somebody’ could blow up the ship. That’s not funny.”

“I agree with you that he’s acting strange, but I also agree with Gwen that we shouldn’t assume he’s serious. He definitely has strong beliefs about the effect that contact with us might have on a new species. Anyway, even if he meant it, it would be hard for one man to hurt the ship,” said Charlie. “With all the redundant systems built into this baby, that’s almost impossible.”

“Willing to risk our lives on an ‘almost’? I mean, we all understand we could die out here for a million reasons, but I am not willing to just let this go. Remember he’s a systems engineer, among other things, and I think he’s nuts. That solid fuel thing wasn’t his first threat! Remember last week he joked about how opening a door would solve our whole stale air problem? Joking about opening a door in a spaceship?”

This was all news to Gwen. “Okay, so he’s made actual threats? We might have to do something. Should it be just us who decides?”

“Who else is there? We don’t have options.”

Gwen shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “Yes, we do, Kyril. We could contact Mission Control. We could ask them.”

“Or we could wake everybody up together, just this once, and get their thoughts,” Charlie suggested and then everyone sat not looking at each other, not speaking.

Finally Gwen spoke into the silence. Quietly she said, “There’s something we haven’t considered.”

Both men looked at her.

“You two are due for metabosleep in less than a week. When I wake your replacements, they’ll be a sleep cycle behind in background and things could happen fast. Whatever we’re going to do, we should do it now.”

“Agreed. Let’s go find Stephen.”

The ship had always felt small to Gwen, but the need to search every room and every passageway made it seem huge. All three of them stayed together so that whoever first encountered Stephen wouldn’t be alone; there was no way of knowing what his frame of mind might be. They didn’t find Stephen, but he found them and he had a weapon. The ship carried plasma cutters because geologists on board used them to slice samples from metallic meteors, ship engineers used them to make repairs, and there were countless other uses. Stephen had modified one to use as a handheld weapon, and since everyone understood what a weapon like that could do to human flesh, they listened.

“Commander, if you’d be so kind as to put these two in their sleep pods? Then I’ll do the same for you. It will be easier for all three of you if you’re asleep like the others.”

Charlie consciously kept his hands at his sides though he wasn’t used to talking without them. He didn’t want Stephen to misinterpret motion and hurt someone. Charlie’s voice sounded like velvet feels. “I don’t think so, Stephen. Let’s talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to say. I believe you’re good people, and that’s why I’ll allow you to be asleep when I do this. But you believed the lies Mission Control told you about having peaceful intentions. That makes you infantile. Whether because of intent or eventual effect, humans kill.”

“But you’re suggesting you’ll kill everyone on board,” said Kyril.

“Sometimes violence is the best option, especially when a limited act of violence prevents more larger-scale violence, even an existential one. The scale does matter. I tried to convince you to scrub the mission, remember? I tried to make you see the obvious.”

While Charlie frantically sorted arguments in his head, looking for the perfect one, it was Gwen who found it. She took a half-step toward Stephen and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “Why did you sign on for this mission, Stephen? Before you had doubts, what compelled you to leave your life on Earth behind, to sacrifice years of relative certainty and comfort to risk everything out here?”

As he considered her question, Stephen’s face changed from hard and matter-of-fact to almost wistful. “Since I was a boy, I was fascinated with the idea of other beings, other intelligences and points of view that would be different from our human ones. I read every bit of science fiction and fantasy that included first contact. I decided that if there was anything alive in this universe besides human beings, I wanted to see it. If there were beings, I wanted to meet them. When I was approached about this mission, I knew this was my chance.”

“Me too. And I bet if we asked every person on this ship the same question, most would give the same reason. We’re curious. We want to see what’s out there, see who is out there. Each of us wants to be among the first humans they meet, and the first to interact with them. We want to be the first ones changed by the knowledge of who they are. Don’t you still want that?”

Stephen shook his head and kept shaking it, the plasma cutter wavering in his hands.

None of the others moved.

“Nononononono.”

“Stephen. Stephen, listen to me. I’m not trying to trick you,” Gwen continued. “I want you to understand that I believe the desire to see is what we all share and that it’s still the most important thing. Don’t you want to meet these creatures, figure out what they value and what they fear, learn from them? Don’t you still want to know who might be out there?”

Stephen stared at her. “I do, but it’s impossible. Even if we all agree about how we’ll handle this, that’s not enough. The politics and powers at home will take over and ruin the good we intend.”

Kyril stepped forward to stand next to Gwen and he took her hand. Charlie moved up beside her on her other side and added softly, “Can I tell you what I’m thinking, Stephen? The idea Gwen gave me just now?”

“Go ahead. Talk.”

“What if we go the rest of the way, follow the signal, and find these life forms. And when we do, we’ll wake everyone and together learn all we can, all these new life forms will allow for as long as they’ll allow it. I have the feeling we’ll learn more about ourselves in the process, but that’s another subject.”

“You haven’t said anything different than before, because when Mission Control finds out, all hell breaks loose on those poor creatures and we’ll be the reason for more death.”

“Not if we lie,” Charlie said.

“What?”

Louder, he said, “Not. If. We. Lie. Maybe we tell Mission Control all we found was an automated signal, or a ship that blew up as we approached. Whatever we tell them, it won’t be the truth, and we won’t give them any information to lead them to the aliens.”

“Recorded data gets relayed automatically—our course, our heading, our camera feed, everything,” said Stephen.

“It is,” agreed Kyril. “We’d have to account for that. Maybe after we met them and learned what we could, we might head out into deep space? Or maybe we could send the ship out there while we stay with them, if that were possible. I know every person in this crew, and I’m certain they would all agree. We all signed on willing to sacrifice everything to see what no one else ever had, Stephen. I still want to see what’s out there.”

“That speaks for me as well,” Gwen said. “What do you say?”

“First of all, I think you might be lying. As soon as I give up this cutter, you could tackle me, put me in a pod, and leave me there forever.”

Gwen heard his voice quaver.

“But second of all, I think I believe you. I’m not sure why, but I do. And yes, I still want to see.” He gave the cutter to Charlie and flinched when their hands touched.

“Good God! You’re one crazy motherfucker, Stephen,” Kyril said a bit louder than he intended, “and you about scared the piss out of me. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re totally wrong about the powers that be.”

The breath Gwen took when she smiled felt full of relief. She imagined a baby’s first breath must feel like that. “Okay, we have a plan, personal conscience over policy. We’ll lie through our teeth, and we have to do it perfectly. But first we need to do something else. We have to wake the other eight and convince them.”

pencil

Gail A. Webber taught science, middle school through college, for thirty-two years, and then worked with children and teenagers considered at-risk. Since retiring, she has returned to her old love, fiction writing. She lives and works on a tiny farm in western Maryland. Relatively new to the publishing arena, Gail’s work has appeared in The Tower Journal, Persimmon Tree, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Fiftiness, and Pink Chameleon, as well as two recent anthologies. She has also published two novels. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com

Why the Lapwing Laughs

Posted on by

Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Bronze
Christina De La Rocha

Photo Credit: Theophilos Papadopoulos/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

I walk in.

Usually they frown and dismiss me and I close the door and set my sights on the next one. Because you try surviving on a pension these days. You wouldn’t give up either. You’d be “volunteering” for medical trials left, right, center, and up the wazoo (yes, even those). They pay and they’re interesting. A break from routine, a strange drug, or three months of prepared meals and a hilarious exercise regime. Even if you’re just the control, you learn new things and that’s so much better than bingo. And so you keep trying to get yourself enrolled in trials.

This time, as they take me in from behind their clipboards and glasses, I see I have piqued their interest. They will let me be their guinea pig.

“Mr. Pfannkuchen,” one says, “you offer us the chance to see how the elderly brain takes to the technology.”

The other nods. “Yes, perhaps you will dispel our doubts that the aged brain retains the plasticity to adapt to it.”

Snotball and Scuzzface, I name them right then and there, although it’s more that they’re ignorant than nasty. They’re too young for hemorrhoids. They’ve never operated an aged, elderly brain. They have no clue what it can do.

I stay and they drill everything into my head. Literally. It takes some weeks for me to recover. Then they send me home.

“The experiment will begin soon,” Scuzzface says.

“Avoid operating heavy machinery,” Snotball adds. “You might find yourself suddenly disoriented.”

I leave with a drone over me, serenading me with its eight-rotor whine. It’s weird to be tracked like this, like I am a hot Hollywood brat ripe for some sort of insanity that they want shots of to wire off wirelessly to the press.

But, anyway, you don’t still function at my age unless you subscribed early to the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy of life. I still fight the stairs, battle the gym, and go every day for a walk. It helps that I live out in the countryside where walking is more soothing and less crime-ridden than it is in the city. The biggest fear I have here is of horse apples.

So I’m out on a farm road one morning, on one of my usual routes. The path runs between two cornfields with stalks reaching up towards the sky, although not quite as high as my eight-rotor tail, its Wi-Fi device, and whatever else it has packed into its body.

It is a beautiful day so I close my eyes and stretch my arms out to soak in the sun. I listen to what hum of the day I can hear under the drone’s droning; mainly the rustling of stalks in the quickening air. Wanting to be one with it all, I start with the corncobs, all fifty bazillion of them surrounding me on all sides from both sides of the road. I feel them all in my brain, the shape of them and their location in space. I feel their heft, the bumpy curves of their kernels. I feel all the ants crawling upon them, each one with its little legs going dink!-dink!-dink!-dink!-dink! as they travel. I feel the caterpillars boring within each cob (a slow munch… munch… munch…). And then I feel the moles, the mice, and the beetles scuttling upon and skittering within the ground.

I exhale.

I may be making this all up (I can’t really sense where all those corncobs are and all that), but life is grand.

That’s when it hits me. Something vast superimposes itself over the pastoral landscape, adding previously unimaginable dimension.

For starters, now I know everything it is humanly possible to know about Zea mays.

Zea mays var. indentata, I correct myself. Also known as dent corn, directly descended from maize domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Balsas River Valley of southwestern Mexico by the people living there at that time.

I become aware that as it is a hot, dry day, the seven-hundred-and-fifty-two-thousand maize plants around me are all holding their breath. All their stomata are closed, preventing the release of of oxygen into the atmosphere and the uptake of carbon dioxide out of it. (Okay, technically that’s the opposite of breathing, but allow an old man poetic license, for crying out loud.) This prevents the profligate evaporation of water out of the soil, via the pores of the plants.

Five birds bomb in (barn swallows, Hirundo rustica), zooming, swooping, chirping, and hunting like mad acrobats completely at ease in the air. I know their speed, how they maneuver so magnificently with tiny changes to the tilt and shape of their wings, rump, and tail, and the evolving statistics of each individual’s fly-catching success.

I perceive that my familiar farm track follows the course of a small stream perfectly hidden beneath the thick stands of nettles (Urtica dioica subsp. dioica), chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), dewberries, blackberries, and raspberries (Rubus caesius, Rubus ulmifolius, Rubus fruticosus, and Rubus idaeus) that line the left side of the road. All of these plants are edible and the nettles, in particular, indicate that this frequently disturbed soil is, unsurprisingly, given the frequency with which it is fertilized, rich in the nutrients nitrate and phosphate.

I know then that this farm track/stream has been the dividing line between two properties since this area was first cleared and drained for farming, 400 years ago, and that pipes sunk under the fields continue this drainage from several topographic depressions.

Previously, temperate forest (consisting mainly of oak, beech, chestnut, larch, and elm trees) alternated with bog atop this Quaternary alluvium of chert (cryptocrystalline silica such as used in the construction of early stone tools), granite, and schist ground down to gravel and sand, carried over, and deposited by the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet during the last glacial period. This rolling landscape, in fact, marks a southern edge of the miles-high pile of ice at its most extensive extent 18,000 years ago.

It is all here simultaneously around me: the rustling cornstalks; the bitter, glacial wind; the bog and its frogs; and the tall, stately presence of thousands of trees. I sense the comings and goings of the animals and insects and even the human beings that have inhabited this area for thousands of years. I know their customs, their habits, their beliefs, and sometimes even their names, when they were born, and how they died. All of this is woven into a web and I am a part of it too.

I stand transfixed as knowledge streams in about the sun, the sky, the wind, and the air. I smile, amazed as I am introduced to the journey of carbon from the interior of the Earth, out through a volcano, up into the sky, down into the soil, up through roots, into plant biomass, into a herbivore, back out to the air, used for the dissolution of a rock, converted into carbonate ions, delivered to the ocean, taken up by a calcareous plankter, and then sunk to the sediments to be subducted back down into the interior of the Earth to start all over again. I thrill to know that each atom of carbon in my body and in all of that corn has, on average, cycled into and out of the interior of the Earth at least seven times in the last several billion years. The joy this brings tingles out to the tips of all my extremities, including my nose. All of this knowledge drags me into the everything.

And so I trip through the next few days. My orange juice at breakfast treats me to all there is to know about orange groves, about the evolution and development of citrus fruits and their relatives, and about the chemical components of orange, tangy flavor. This so beats reading the back of the cereal box.

Sitting down floods me with the history of chairs, their design, and manufacture, with an anatomical/physiological cost-benefit analysis of sitting, and with a multicultural exploration of sitting traditions down through the ages. It is all the freaking coolest thing ever.

How pea-brained and sad my life before now, spent in the dark and the dirt like a cave man.

I begin to grasp that this is how the human race will transcend. This is the next phase of existence, the next big step in our evolution: rapid, unfettered access to and understanding of all the knowledge that Homo sapiens has acquired over its 180,000 calendar years. We shall be unified, humanized, and then lifted beyond our humanity in our awe of the amazing, meaningful, and interconnected.

Even those who still fear that a flood of knowledge and reason will wash away faith and divinity and flatten the world will be moved. A few moments in this live stream and the scales will fall from their eyes. For the first time in their lives, they’ll be able to fully appreciate the details of Creation.

Even atheist, grumpy-puss I spend the week in a trance, skin shivering, nerves tingling, and eventually am elevated. My self obliterates and becomes subsumed into a great and magnificent vastness. In a word (well, three): Everything. Makes. Sense. And, hot damn, is it beautiful.

I’m back in the office with Snotball and Scuzzface when they power it down. The loss collapses me onto the desk.

“You can’t,” I wail. “You can’t take that away!”

“The experiment is over, Mr Pfannkuchen.” They nod and tick on their clipboards.

“Please,” I howl and beg them to plug me back in. “I was nothing and I was supreme. I knew everything’s name, what it was doing, how it was doing it, and what its place was in everything.”

“You must wait for the first commercial model.”

“How long?” I cry.

“Five to ten years, maybe twenty.”

But I’m a very old man.

“Take heart, your participation has helped,” Snotball says. “We’ll put you down for a discount.”

Scuzzface adds, “Your pay has been transferred. Thank you for your time.”

Then I’m shoved out the door to face what’s left of my life naked and alone. At least they hadn’t smiled and said, “Have a nice day.”

What does one do? I carry on, stumbling about like a fish gutted, an amputee lost and cast out of the garden. Plants are just plants, birds are just birds, and flavors have no extra charm. I am no longer privy to information. I am again an individual. I am no longer enmeshed in the Cosmos.

I try to rectify the situation with my smartphone, searching the interwebs as I walk. What’s that? What’s it up to? What are its secrets? But progress is slow and the threads so clunky, I chuck the phone into the stream.

What a joke.

I consider throwing myself in too, but I don’t need to be mainlining all of human knowledge to know that this will just net me nettle stings, muddy clothes, and maybe some broken ribs. Dying there would take hours and hours of being wet and uncomfortably cold.

So I walk on through the flat, grey gloom of the sunny day.

When I reach the edge of an open field, I see a bird in the air. It’s whirling and swirling, looping, climbing, diving, and laughing, that fucker. I search my own small memory banks for the name: a lapwing. But why does it fly so adventurously? I know nothing. I must be content to make up a fable.

It flies like that because it can because flying like that is super good fun. It is laughing because I have been born five or ten years, maybe twenty, too soon to regain the grand, transcendent knowledge of everything.

And the reason the lapwing is not just laughing but laughing loudly?

Because it knows that I know it. And that is rotten bad luck.

pencilAfter 20 years of working as a biogeochemist/oceanographer, Christina De La Rocha had a mid-life crisis, threw away her career, moved to Germany, and decided to learn how to write. So far she’s had one short story published (in Analog) and has completed a popular science book that is due out in 2017. Email: xtinadlr[at]hushmail.com

Jeanie in a Bottle

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Silver
Valerie Lunt

Photo Credit: Inayaili de León Persson/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

The cement was cold beneath her hands. A common block wall—or so it appeared. Jeanie knew better. Even her recon team with their most advanced scans could not get a read through the material. A special power hummed through it, almost pulling her in before she pushed.

She felt her heart speed up, her breathing shallow. This was the best part of the job, the part she’d been doing before she had a job. The part that got her the job in the first place. And what a job it was, taking her into some of the most wonderful rooms in the world. Rooms most people never even knew existed and fewer still had seen. Treasure rooms. Vaults. Mind-blowing technology. Government secrets. She’d seen them all. That’s not to say she was always successful. One time she’d found herself in a near-vacuum, unable to breathe, her tissues swelling painfully in the sudden lack of atmospheric pressure. She’d been discovered before she could make a second attempt. And, she tried to keep this under wraps, but the greater the distance of solid material, the tighter it squeezed. One day she might just try something too big and end up stuck, her dead body (or essence—she wasn’t exactly sure how the process worked) adding to the very defense she was trying to penetrate.

Still, that was never going to stop her. “What have you got for me this time?” she whispered, a smile teasing her lips. She pressed herself against the wall and willed herself into the room beyond. A whirlwind of color, a pressure that seemed to force her very molecules apart, an odd catch on her mind, and she was through, materializing into the most disturbing room yet.

“So you’re the invisible girl.” The voice jolted her out of her shock.

She looked around. No one was there. And it’s not like there were many places to hide.

“Look who’s talking,” Jeanie said, trying to mask her fear. “Or rather, I would look, but…” Her eyes raked the disconcertingly familiar walls for any sign of a microphone or camera.

The voice seemed to smile when it spoke next. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself. Most people thought the stories were just a myth.”

Jeanie should go; she’d been discovered. It wasn’t good to have a reputation when you were a spy, especially a spy with a super power.

But instead, she lingered, reaching a hand out to an old wooden bird, a child’s toy. A distinctive scratch mark caught her eye and she pulled back. “How are you doing this?” she asked, her voice betraying more fear than she would have liked.

“Ah, do you like it? We made it especially for you,” came the disembodied voice.

“You know me?” She looked around again for a hidden lens or transmitter, but there was nothing out of place. Everything was just as she remembered it. (And just as pink.)

“We do now.” It was smiling again.

Jeanie walked over to the window. Lacy pink curtains draped to the sides. A walnut tree waved its arms lazily, its leaves filtering the sunlight. This isn’t possible, Jeanie thought. She unlocked the familiar latch and pulled it up. But when she tried to pop the screen out, she met more wall. Wall, said her fingers. Wide open space, said her eyes.

“Don’t be so cocky,” Jeanie replied, angry now. “So you replicated a room.” Down to the very last detail. Even the smell was the same. But there was no reason to say that.

“Oh, is that what we did? It was just a byproduct. The room was created as you… walked in.”

Jeanie frowned at a stain on the floor. Her dog, Puddles (named for her regrettable lack of potty training) was responsible for the well-known spot. She’d always thought it looked a bit like a koala bear. But then there were her shoes, sitting brand-new in the corner. Those had been worn out by the time they got Puddles…

“It’s taken from my memories?”

“Very good. Your most vivid ones from childhood.”

As Jeanie continued to examine, she noticed other anachronisms there as well. Things were in their most memorable state, pieces of the room she’d grown up in, but mixed in a way that, all together, had never been. A lace doily hung over her old dresser, a picture of her grandmother on top. She’d put those there after Grandma had died—after getting rid of the old carpet.

“You scanned me?”

“Yes.”

That would explain the strange catch on her mind on entering.

“As I said, this place was built for you.”

Jeanie felt partial relief. So they hadn’t somehow been watching her since childhood. On the other hand, they probably hadn’t gone to all this effort just to get her youthful ideas on room decorating, even if Strawberry Shortcake was making a comeback. They must have set up fake intel to draw her in. Her feeling of exposure heightened. She really should be going now.

“Well, I’d love to stay and chat,” said Jeanie, one hand back on the wall, “but this isn’t the intel that was advertised.” And with that, she pushed.

The wall didn’t meld. She didn’t move. She tried again.

“It won’t work,” came the voice. “You were stuck the moment you came through. It knows the way you enter, your vibration signature. You can never pass it.”

Jeanie tried again, this time in the exact place she’d entered. Nothing. She was hitting a wall, for the first time in her career. She pushed again, then screamed in frustration, punching the wall for good measure. It left her whole arm stinging but didn’t make so much as a dent in the wall.

She tried to calm down. “So you caught me. It won’t last. You’re not the first to try. Nothing can hold me! I can’t be kept anywhere by anyone!”

“There’s a first time for everything,” came the patronizing answer. “Try not to live so much in the past.” It laughed. “Ha ha! Get it?”

Jeanie got it. But, as much as she wanted to, Jeanie couldn’t punch that person anymore than she could punch through the walls. Instead, she tore up the room, trying to find a weakness. She threw the old rocking horse at the fake door and crashed the lamp against the wall. Nothing. Literally, nothing. Nothing broke or even chipped. Not a scratch appeared on the wall. Everything seemed stuck in the state they’d been created in. Forget those. She’d use her hands, feeling for a door—they’d have to have a door if they wanted to run more tests on her—or did they intend to keep her here until she starved?

“There’s nothing you can do,” the voice said again.

“Now that is never true,” she muttered. There was always something you could do. She kept feeling all along the walls, trusting her fingers instead of her eyes until finally she found something, a microphone. “See?” she said, smiling. And she smashed her elbow into it.

It wouldn’t break.

Laughter.

“Okay, you’re really starting to annoy me!” She took her knife out and tried that. No use. She went back to kicking the walls, ramming them with her shoulders. If there was an electrical component to them keeping her in, maybe she could jar it long enough to break through.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” said the voice, its tone disturbing with its utter lack of worry. “I’ve got some scans to see to, after all.”

Jeanie didn’t know how long it was before she finally gave up. She sank down on the Strawberry Shortcake bedspread, exhausted. She really ought to bring explosives with her on these trips. There was no team coming to rescue her. They could not risk their connection being discovered with this one. That was their understanding anyway, before she came in and found out it was a trap.

Absently, she fingered the hole in her bedspread, then pulled her finger out when she became aware of the old habit. Tears pricked at her eyes. She blinked them back and held on to anger instead. Who were these people, adding such a personal humiliation to her capture? Had the scan really needed to work this way? In either case, it felt too much like treating a child with a tantrum. Stay in your room until you calm down! Mommy needs to run some tests. Except, her mother had never been able to keep her in her room. Hers wasn’t the safest gift to have as a child. How many times she wandered off onto the streets… Her mother had had to sing her to sleep most every night to keep her from leaving.

She leaned up against the wall, that impenetrable wall, and hummed one of her mom’s old tunes. Slowly, her heart calmed with the tune. I just wish I could see Brody one more time. The thought surprised her. No time like impending doom to clear up your love life. She pictured his hair, blowing wildly in the wind of the chopper. He was always flying. She could almost feel the vibrations of the helicopter now just thinking about it.

“What are you doing?”

Jeanie jerked up at the sharp interruption. Panic. That was panic in its tone. Hope flared and Jeanie realized the vibrations weren’t just her imagination. Could this be? Might the very same tactic her mother had used to keep her in now serve to get her out? Pressing herself firmly against the wall, she hummed more purposefully, the music thrumming not only in her chest and body but in the wall itself. But still, she wasn’t getting through.

The voice scoffed. “Well, maybe you should try a funeral dirge next. We’ve gotten all we need from you. Let’s see if you can materialize your way through acid.”

It can work, thought Jeanie. She’s desperate; I’m on the right track. Sprinklers sprouted from the ceiling. Ignoring them, Jeanie focused, feeling for the right vibration within her, within the wall. Yes! There it was! She hummed the low tone, disrupting whatever cancellation system they had in place to block her, causing it now to resonate in a helpful way.

Acid fell, the first drops sizzling on her hair, her skin, but Jeanie didn’t stick around for more. There was someone she needed to see.

After she threw out her old Strawberry Shortcake pillow, that was.

pencilValerie Lunt, a native Arizonan, always loved writing, although, for several years she confused that with hating it. Thankfully, she got that sorted out in time to choose English as her major at ASU. She just finished writing her first novel (YA fantasy) this year and is wrapping up her second. Email: valelunt[at]gmail.com