Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel VFX/Univ. of Texas at Austin

DOWN HERE IN the black ocean of Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa, time is marked by the turning of tides and the subtle shifts in water temperature. Night and day are the same, and our isolation complete. Then the pod arrives and we’re no longer alone, no longer in the dark.

The pod arrives in the evening, when the taste of alien snorkel fish are in my gills. It arrives on a day just like any other – except that I’m having a rare night out.

The Margarita Sushi Bar is awash with seaweed beer. It always is on Tuesdays as it’s barrel refill day; I’m meeting my pals here for a drink and a hand of poker or two but they’re late and meanwhile guilt hangs heavy on me like a choking algae while Marie languishes at home, sick and in pain. My beautiful wife, slender like an ocean willow, I should be there with her.

But she signs for me to go, she says, Vlad, you’re not helping, moping. And I suppose she’s right. So here I am.

The Margarita Sushi Bar is expensive. It even has real lighting fixtures, not that you don’t still need visual augmentation. I hook my prosthetic fins over the mooring bar as I wait and order beer; the green stuff is delivered in a sachet.

The bar is busy tonight and I find myself sandwiched between acquaintances. One is an old drinking buddy with leg stumps and sixteen fingers that dance like a cockle picker’s; the other’s a former colleague, Mitzi I think her name is, blind and bi-gendered with major neurological damage who shakes incessantly like a demented jellyfish. We all have something, here on Europa, what with the radiation from the crash of our astronaut ancestors and maybe a little inbreeding but I’m lucky really, my physical impairments could be worse. Just a bit of deformity in my bone structure which makes me smaller than most, and more rotund, but generally I’m pretty functional.

We exchange a few words, the three of us, by sign and by text – nobody speaks, our gills make that impossible. Mitzi never could have spoken I’m sure, even without the gill implant surgery at birth. But down here little things like that don’t matter; we all swim in the same waters as the saying goes.

Mitzi snorts as she sucks up her beer through a straw. She swallows and splutters a bit. And then the pod comes crashing through the ice ceiling.

I paddle frantically in the maelstrom, jostling bergs of ice, beer sachets, packets of fish snackers and chair anchors. Something smacks Mitzi in the face and gives her a two-inch gash along one scaly cheek. She oozes blood into the current.

I turn my Visual Acuity Goggles up to max and see the carnage of what was once Europa’s premier watering hole. And there bobbing amongst the debris is the pod, torpedo-shaped and metal mirror-sleek, wholly alien to our familiar habitat of ice and salt and plastic. I wish I could swim away straight back to Marie but I would never be forgiven – I’m on Europa’s governing council and security committee. So I start to paddle, closer.

The pod steadies itself in the churning waters. It’s like a giant tubeworm, writhing about a steaming black smoker. Its business end points down into the deep. It has a great corkscrew device at its base and it’s giving off a tremendous amount of heat.

“Thermal drill,” texts Mitzi. I hadn’t noticed she was following me. Her prosthetic propeller attachment bats the ice and her useless limbs trail behind.

“Yes, like the Aquarius II, but smaller,” I reply, history suddenly weighing heavy in the salt sea.

“It must have been exciting all those years ago, being marooned here on an alien world.”

“That’s one word for it. Maybe you should go back, it might be dangerous, a bomb or something.”

“I wonder what it was like, on the surface.”

“Deadly. The radiation would fry you. Even in a heated tank you would be reduced to fish soup. Now go, please.” I wave my little arms, there’s no point in us both dying if it comes to that.

She glares at me momentarily then grins, showing rows of sharp little shark teeth.

“Okay,” she says, and starts to move away. And as she does so the pod switches on its lights.

The beams are dazzling. Here in the ocean beneath the ice it’s always as black as oil and blind and sighted alike are the same. So eyeless Mitzi gasps and bubbles and scrambles to shut down her visual augmentation hardware with as much desperation as I.

As Mitzi floats away my eyes adjust, and I look out at my world fully illuminated for the first time in a hundred years. It’s at once the same and yet different. My vision is no better than it was a moment ago but as my nictitating membranes blink everything feels more real, more immediate.

I re-examine the pod and it’s then that I notice the tiny video screen, no bigger than the palm of my hand. It’s fixed to one side of the device and it shows a face, pale and symmetrical, a face like practically every pre-crash movie star I’ve ever seen, an eerily human face and for a moment I just watch and inhale ocean.

Then a sound bursts from the pod, an explosive crackle followed by:

“Callisto Base calling Europa moon. Is there anyone alive down there?” It’s a movie-star voice, straight from Hollywood.

My jaw hangs open.

I need to reply but it’s no good texting, with neither goggles nor optic implants they wouldn’t receive my words. There’s only one thing I can do: sign. So I raise my hands in front of the screen.

Yes. Here I, here we.

“What is that? British Sign Language? I think we need a translation team down here.”

They can see me, but they don’t understand. For the first time in my life my lack of speech is actually a handicap. There must be a way. Of course, a bar menu. Programmable, textable, visible, I just have to find one. I paddle around and at last spot one nestling in a pocket of ice. Seizing it I swim back to the pod. I hold it in front of the screen and begin to type.

“Callisto. We thought you had forgotten about us.”

“Europa moon. Amazing. Incredible. No, never forgotten. We thought you were dead. Europa moon. We’re going to come and get you.”

Success. They can see me. I continue to type:

“You would be welcome here.” Although even as I text I wonder.

The pod falls silent; the screen pixellates.

“We took a hit on the way down, Europa. We’re going to lose communications soon. But give us three months and we’ll be with you for real. That will be a great day.”

And before I can reply the signal dies.

#

“WHAT DO YOU think they meant by ‘coming to get us’?” Councillor Epstein doesn’t look happy, and she’s not alone, the council meeting isn’t going well.

“I’m sure the Callistans mean well,” I say. “They just meant they want to rescue us I think.”

Councillor Rubin snorts his contempt but Epstein silences him with a raised tentacle. “We’ll have to show them we don’t need rescuing. There’s no charity cases on Europa. Nor will we become a mere Callistan colony. Our idea of justice, resting as it does on the principle of physical access and opportunity for all regardless of bodily limitation is unique and—”

Rubin slams his tail fin on the ice wall. “Dammit, we weren’t elected to spout philosophy. So let’s stop talking like we’ve got fish for brains. The risk of losing our independence is the least of our concerns? How about losing our lives? How does that grab you?”

Epstein froths with irritation. She’s literally foaming at the mouth, she sends a stream of bubbles up to the bottom of the ice crust. “I was coming to that. Personally I would think it unlikely but—“

“As unlikely as my scaly backside you mean.” Rubin is now circling the council chamber, eyeballing each councillor in turn. “These people are nothing like us. We’ve been mutating, radically, for 150 years, they might not even think we’re human. And we’ve all read the history books, we know what can happen.”

“I’ve read those history books too,” I say, determined to salvage a bit of credibility. “It’s true people like us haven’t always been treated well but we’ve not very often been systematically slaughtered or—”

Everyone is talking at once now and my words are lost in the babble. Epstein has abandoned any attempt to chair and several councillors are paddling away in disgust. Soon the meeting breaks down completely and is rescheduled for the following afternoon.

Later, at home, I tell Marie about it. And ask her, what if the council was right?

“You only have to look at the native fish here in the ocean,” I say as I bite into my alien marblefish stew. “The big fish eat the little fish, the weak and impaired fish fall victim to them all, and we call it natural behaviour. Is our situation really that different? Isn’t it just natural and inevitable that sooner or later we’ll get gobbled up?”

Marie is floating in her filtration tank in the middle of our icy living room, breathing the purified water she hopes might ease her headaches. She puts aside her drink of organic kelp juice to sign to me. Born deaf, sign is her first language, even more than it is for me and the rest of us on Europa. For her, text is a daily challenge to comprehend. But when signing, her words flow like the ocean.

Nature. Sometimes broken. Compassionate ones this know. Callistans this know? Hope we.

Somehow she always knows what to say to ease my fears, and she always knows what to do. She picks up the clay sculpture she is working on – she says it helps her think. Her delicate ice, salt and clay artworks can be found all over town.

“But what if they don’t know? What if they come here and find us…” I abandon text; it’s not nearly expressive enough for what I want to say. I want to say, what if they find us…

alien? Callistans. Invite them I. Blame mine.

It would be all my fault. I should have told them to stay away.

I know Marie better than to expect the usual platitudes; instead she pops another painkiller into her mouth. She takes too many, she says they don’t help much but takes them anyway. Our best medics don’t really know how to help her and it tears my heart to watch her in pain. Sometimes she suffers so much she cries all night long and I can do nothing, only hold her close and tell her I love her.

At last she replies to my question:

If kill us intend they. Do anyway they. Fault no you.

And she’s right, of course.

#

IT’S THREE MONTHS later, and our seismograph machine is reporting a gentle but constant icequake 200 yards east of town.

“They are coming,” says Rubin, and his words settle in my stomach like a bad mollusc.

As the tremors increase eight of us paddle out to meet the visitors. The arguments were long over who was to lead the delegation, but eventually I’m chosen, my prior contact finally settling the matter.

Chunks of ice dislodge above our heads, new bergs that float away to be absorbed into the current. And then the vessel breaks through into the ocean in a boiling mass of metal and foam.

Again it’s torpedo shaped, except this time much bigger. I paddle closer as it cools while the rest of the welcoming party linger behind, sheltering in the swell of a particularly large berg. The vessel starts to open. I remove my goggles as alien light floods out and blink as my eyes adjust. I watch the Callistans emerge, five of them, all dressed in the same skin-tight apparel and burdened with their air breathing equipment. They are amazing; they all look the same. Same size, same shape; two arms, two legs, they could be clones of each other. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but for some reason it is.

“Welcome to Europa,” I say. I communicate by text once more but wave a fin in the customary greeting.

“Honoured,” replies Commander Narodny. He smiles behind his plastic mask and I try to assess whether it’s genuine. His features are so strange and uniform I hardly trust my own judgement.

The others swim forward; there are formal introductions. Then all of us – five Callistans, eight Europans – circumnavigate the town.

First we visit the aquarium, both the alien and Terran section. The Callistans are truly fascinated by the tube worms and snorkel fish. Then we visit the pottery, the seaweed garden and the fish farm, the brewery and the plastics factory and of course the reconstructed Margarita Sushi Bar for refreshments. Finally we visit the Medical Bay and Prosthetics Studio. And there, to my horror, lies Marie, floating unconscious in a tank.

“Dear God, what’s wrong with her?” I simultaneously sign and text, then seize Chief Medic Bergstrom by the flipper. He backs away and tries to calm me while Epstein ushers the visitors away. I demand to know why I wasn’t informed.

“You were busy, I’m sorry,” says Bergstrom. “I was told not to bother you. It’s okay, she’s stable.“

“What about the baby?” I take deep breaths of water, trying to stay still.

“The baby is alive, for now,” says the Medic. “Though after four stillbirths you can’t expect too much.”

I wasn’t, but Marie won’t give up, she keeps reminding me how stillbirth rates are falling.

“So what happened to her?” I ask, again. His reluctance to speak makes me fear the worst but he has to tell me, however bad it is.

“She took too many pills,” says Bergstrom.

“No.” I stare into the container where Marie lies, attached to tubes and monitors. It can’t be that, it’s just not like her. “It was an accident, it must have been.”

“I don’t know, you tell me?”

But all I can do is float there in the water, too afraid to even consider the possibility that I might have missed the signs.

#

I’M IN THE seaweed garden, and Sandy Birdhouse, one of the Callistans, is here also collecting samples. I watch her as she snips pieces of green and yellow weed with a pair of metal clippers and packs them into a box.

“How is your wife?” she asks as she works. “I heard what happened.”

I grimace. Nothing stays quiet for long around here. “She’s okay. She’s home, resting,” I say.

“It sounds like it was just an accident.”

“Yes, that’s what Marie says, and I believe her. She was only trying to stop the pain.”

Sandy nods. “Your medicine seems pretty advanced in some ways, certainly when it comes to prosthetics, but in other ways you’re way behind us.” She reattaches her clippers to her belt and opens a small bag she has there. She offers me a plastic bottle. “Headache pills,” she says. “The everyday kind, but maybe they will help.”

I look at the bottle, doubtfully. The Callistans have been here for two weeks now and have shown no sign of hostility, but still, they are strange folk.

“Take it,” she says. “At least, think about it.”

I take the bottle and thank her.

#

IT’S TWO DAYS before I tell Marie about the pills, but when I do she insists I hand them over.

Callistans good. Paranoid you. She signs and laughs.

Maybe sensible I.

No. Silly you. Headache pills, bad way kill. Silly.

I’m sure she’s right. Really I’m just worried she’ll have some kind of bad reaction to the strange drugs, after the overdose I hesitate to give her even a placebo. But I can’t argue with her. I surrender the pills.

She swallows one and we wait.

We decide to watch an old movie, but can’t agree on the title. I want to watch Terminator while she wants to watch Casablanca. In the end we choose one of the Star Trek films, the one with the whale, and are both happy.

Star Trek aliens, look same all, says Marie.

Yes, know I. I take her slender hand in my stubby one.

#

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Marie announces: Headache. Gone.

I put the film on pause, stare at her and text, “And you feel okay otherwise?”

Fine I. She grins and stretches. She paddles around our little icy home as though checking she still has full use of all her faculties. Better than years I. Go celebrate we.

I suggest maybe that’s a bit premature, but she’s adamant. She drags me out into the current and off we paddle in the direction of the Margarita Sushi Bar.

The bar is packed, the five Callistans are by now proving something of a tourist attraction. Each one of them is surrounded by a small gang of Europans. But Sandy spots me as we float in and waves us over, and Marie is full of praise for Callistan medicine. I translate Marie’s signs to text, and Sandy’s words to sign.

“Maybe you and Vlad could travel back to Callisto with us. Then you could get a proper medical examination,” says Sandy. “The capsule could cope with a couple of extra passengers, and I’m sure I could twist Commander Narodny’s arm.”

Marie looks wide-eyed, but says nothing, so I help her out. “It’s a very kind offer but I don’t see how we could leave Europa. We can’t breathe air anymore.”

Travel in tank. Maybe, says Marie.

“I don’t know. It’s a long way.” Perhaps I’m a coward to fear the surface, to dread air and space and vacuum in place of the cool, comforting waters of the deep, but it seems obvious to me that us Europans can’t live up there.

Adventure think I! says Marie, grinning. Permanent stay, no, no?

“If you wanted to return no doubt that could be arranged,” says Sandy. “There are already plans for future space missions.”

And so we’ve been discussing it. Maybe if the headache pills had really proved to be the wonder drugs they first appeared and had cured all of Marie’s pain we wouldn’t have decided to go. Maybe if we hadn’t been offered a trump card – the possibility of saving our unborn child – we would have agreed it was too risky. But as it was, we figured we couldn’t refuse.

The Council is behind us all the way. Marie they wish well, as for me I’ve been made ambassador, Europa’s first, so this will be an exercise in interlunar relations.

In many ways it’s exciting. The Callistans say they want to set up diplomatic ties and trade agreements. The signs are good that they intend to respect our differences and unique environment. And if Marie and I want to stay on Callisto permanently they’ll do everything possible to accommodate our needs.

I still have my doubts but five weeks after its arrival, Marie and I find ourselves crammed together in a tank side by side as the strange capsule fills with deadly air.

The vibration is awful and the heat as the craft works its way slowly to the surface. I stick my fins in my ears against the roar of the engines and screaming metal; I press my nose to the plastic side of the tank. Marie is lucky, she can’t hear any of this but there’s nothing wrong with her eyes. We’ve been placed alongside the tiny porthole window so we can see out. Though right now all I can see is bubbling ice marked by an occasional grimy patch of reddened salts and clay.

It takes many hours to carve a path to the surface, and I feel like I’m in purgatory throughout. The capsule is uncomfortably warm and acts as a decompression chamber as it rises.

I try to doze, but the noise and the crushing fear stops me. At least I’m not alone, Marie is here, I can take comfort in that. Together we try to stay positive, but it’s not easy and in the end I wonder if we’ve made the wrong choice – what if we were never meant to leave the ocean?

Then Sandy says, “We’re nearly there.” She takes our night vision goggles away; she says we won’t need them anymore as a final lurch brings us crashing through the surface ice. The capsule falls silent. It lifts away into space, the residual water on the window pane evaporates. And we look out: at the Universe. At the ragged, pale and frosty Europan plain below, at ancient starlight, and above all at Jupiter. It looms overhead, vast and lethal, beautiful with its vivid tangerine clouds that swirl and evolve. The moment seems to last forever.

Marie clutches my hand. Love you I, she says. I smile. Okay be we. And as always I know she’s right.

Elinor Caiman Sands lives in the UK by a small swampish river. It’s rumoured a slightly mischievous but very happy snappy alligator lives there too although sightings of the infamous reptile are rare.

The post Europa Spring appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

“60 SECONDS!”

The Non-Stop Party roared into a moving countdown, the crowds loud and boisterous and ecstatic, the music frenetic and infused with energy.

“What?” said Lenah, she couldn’t hear the words that Karl spoke so stepped closer to him, her hands on his upper arms, her ear to his mouth.

“I’m leaving,” said Karl.

Lenah pulled back to look at his face and search for some humour.

“Really?”

He nodded his head, his face carefully neutral.

“You can’t,” said Lenah.

“30 seconds!”

“Time to do something else,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But the party needs you. Bernie and I need you.”

“There’s more to life than the party, Lenah. I need to create something worthwhile.”

“The party!”

Karl shook his head slowly.

“10!”

“Come with me Lenah.”

“No, Karl.”

“5!”

“Goodbye then.”

“4!”

Karl kissed her, briefly, on the lips.

“3! 2! 1!”

Reality groaned as the party jumped wholesale, Anywhere orchestrating the hundreds of people in a delicate space–time dance. Lenah’s stomach swirled and churned despite the Anywhere compensation routines. There was no transition. No tunnel or blur or blackness. Just here and there, in an instant transition that Lenah’s brain frantically struggled to comprehend despite experiencing it so many times.

A new venue: the long crescent of a beach, hot hammer blows of sunshine, the crystal clarity of the sea. The party never missed a beat. The music cranked up a notch, the bass deeper, the guitars louder, the drums harder. The crowd swelled in a haze of ecstatic thrills.

Lenah stared at the point where Karl had been standing and saw just the throng of the party, hyped up and crazy. Their party.

There were no lingering long farewells since Anywhere, no watching them walk away and hoping they’d turn back. No one more glance, one more chance. Just gone. In a blink.

“Hey,” said Bernie arriving beside her, a quick touch of his hand on her shoulder. He wore nu-tech clothes out of Berlin, looking sharp and from tomorrow and important. Looking like a founder.

“He’s gone, Bernie.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“The party doesn’t stop, Lenah. That’s the deal. Just like we’ve always said.”

She remembered the day that they had imagined the party, its concept arriving fully formed to the three of them. They had been standing on the fringes of a festival as it fizzled out in a jumble of chaos and dissatisfaction. Had felt the disappointment and an urge to create something better, something with style and poise, something fresh. The exact words escaped her, but the memory of being united together, of the three of them suddenly joined in purpose, remained a strong, delicious memory.

“I can’t,” said Lenah.

“We have to,” said Bernie, “we have a party to keep running.”

#

LENAH LAY ON the ground, spread-eagled amidst the super-wheat in the agri-dome as around her the robo-harvesters buzzed away, lost in their own opaque song.

“What are you doing?”

His voice made her whole body jolt, catching her breath. It took her a few seconds to recover.

“I’m making wheat angels,” said Lenah.

Karl lay down beside her, not touching. She stared at the grey churning sky through the transparent carbon nanotube roof of the dome.

“I like the food production,” said Karl, “neat.”

“Agri clan technology,” said Lenah, “super-wheat, harvesters, multi-fruit trees, lab meat, air-scrubber water condensers, micro mills and bakeries. Nothing new, we just aggregate it.”

Her voice quivered as she spoke, more nervous than talking to a global social, or a fan, or a sponsor, or a whole clan.

“Sustainable,” said Karl.

“Non-stop,” said Lenah. “And you?” She turned to him now, just her face, risking the burn of missing him. He was already watching her between the golden stalks of wheat.

“Diffused a panicked plague of locust hoarders sourced out of Kansas, spent some time with the Angels, a while in the Saharan lakes defeating the desert.”

“Happy?”

“Fulfilled.”

“The same thing?”

“I don’t know,” said Karl, he smiled. “You ready to leave the party yet? Come with me?”

“No,” said Lenah and felt anger, betrayal and insult.

A harvester traced Lenah’s outline, its blades whirring mere centimetres from her body. She didn’t flinch.

“It’s not about being ready, Karl, don’t patronise me. The party is important too, you dismiss it as a crazy summer idea we had, a joke. It’s much more than that. Would you let it just die? Stop?”

“Probably,” said Karl, “sorry.”

Lenah sighed and turned back to stare at the sky.

“Where are you off to next?” said Karl.

“We don’t know, the party management software has a list of locations that we add to, it picks one and feeds it to the Anywhere coordinator, encrypted. It’s a surprise for everyone.”

“Risky?”

“Not so far. Party-goers love it, one of our most popular features.”

“USP,” said Karl with deadpan sarcasm.

“We’re not some fucking capitalist business,” said Lenah, sitting up, glaring at him. “Why don’t you go back to making the world a better place, Karl, and leave us hedonists alone.” She spat the words, full of anger and pain, and then felt a confused mix of spiteful success and aching regret as she saw the look of hurt and confusion on Karl’s face.

“Okay,” said Karl. He paused, a moment for Lenah to take it all back, but she held onto the anger and resisted letting go of the feeling. “Bye.”

Then he jumped. Gone. Anywhere taking him away in a twist of fractured causality.

Lenah stood and looked at the wheat angel she had created, just the outline of her splayed body remaining in long golden stalks. Her after-image. A memento. When the party jumped again the angel would remain, until consumed by the surrounding super fast growing cereal. Slowly fading away, yet a token, a measure of their success and reach. She pinged Bernie, received his location and jumped to him.

“I’ve got a new feature, Bernie,” she said, “mementos. Remind me to explain later.”

“Okay,” said Bernie. “Why later? I’ve got time.”

“Not now,” said Lenah, “I need to get wasted.”

She jumped to a bar tent, downed five shots of ultra-vodka, then waded into the seething mass of bodies and music and lights.

#

“LENAH?”

Lenah heard Karl’s voice but thought she was hallucinating, the Bliss still controlling her, fusing her senses together into a heady cocktail.

“Lenah? Can you hear me? It’s Karl.”

She tried to focus, saw a blur that seemed to be speaking, stared hard, saw his face emerge from the fuzziness. She felt a mellow wash of love, heating her from the inside, making her fingers tingle, dampened by sadness and a sharp memory of him leaving.

“You left me,” said Lenah, “you left the party.”

“Yes,” said Karl. “Sit up.”

She felt with her hands either side of her, found manicured grass, which tickled her palms and sent shivers along her limbs. She remembered lying down on the grass, green green grass, black starry night above her, the universe huge and mysterious beyond their world. The immensity of her situation overwhelming. The party enveloping her. Awash in noise and love. Drifting off.

Karl’s hands maneuvered her upwards into a sitting position. A bright white haze caused her to squint, the dark canopy of the stars gone, replaced by something hot and light.

“Drink this,” said Karl.

She felt a bottle at her lips. Felt cool liquid enter her mouth. Suddenly gasped for it, quenching her parched mouth.

She woke from the narco-haze, suddenly, painfully, as if being resuscitated from drowning. Gasping. Shouting. Crying. She didn’t know what she was saying but Karl held her tight until she managed to calm down and shake away the hysteria.

“Hello,” he said finally, looking into her eyes, holding her cheeks softly with his hands.

“You came back,” said Lenah, and she felt the aching loss of him leaving and longed for a hit of Bliss and a transcendent DJ set to take her away and make her forget.

She looked around. The party was located inside a massive meteor crater in the middle of a desert, beneath huge pale skies, dark jagged mountains in the distance. Perfect isolation. Spread across the land as usual, from the stages to the tents to the logistics cabins to the dorms to the hard shell pop-up tents, but between them the life blood of the party, the essence, the people, did not move. It was as if the party-goers had been slaughtered, lying prone and lethargic. A small band of people stood by the main stage, lost in the rowdy rock music but otherwise the party was dead.

“Bernie called me,” said Karl, “said he’d lost you to narcs.”

“And everyone else by the looks of it,” said Lenah.

“Where’d it come from?”

“Out of Asia somewhere, some island tribal clan.”

“They got an agenda, with something so dangerous?”

“Just to be number one,” said Lenah. She turned back to face Karl. “Like most of us.”

Karl didn’t react.

“How’d you wake me up?”

“Anti-narc, got some friends out of Finland, cutting edge enhancers working on supplements for the space clans. Once we isolated the root it took no time to synthesise. Printed a micro-pharm-factory here, looks like we need to increase production.”

“Do we have the right?” said Lenah. “I was happy.”

Karl’s face broke its mask of calm for the first time.

“Don’t give me that bullshit. You were going to die. Do you want the party to continue?”

Lenah hesitated, looked around. Looked back at Karl.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then party rules, no narcs. Take them elsewhere.”

“Okay,” said Lenah, “and if people disagree? We jump and leave them? The population might dwindle. We’ll suffocate the party.”

“Perhaps.”

“What we need,” said Lenah, her mind suddenly charged with ideas and purpose, “is encouragement to behave a certain way. A game. A purpose. Something that socially negates Bliss. That makes Bliss a losing decision.”

“Like purity credits?” said Karl with disgust in his voice.

“No, more like aggregate emotional state monitoring,” said Lenah. She felt the fire in her now, the gestation of a new project, just like when the three of them had come up with the idea for the party and decided to implement it. Action.

“Know if anyone does that?”

“No,” said Karl shaking his head.

Lenah searched The Hub for associated technology, the lists of clans and ideas and products scrolling down her vision. Lost for minutes in a maze of possibility.

“Here’s something, emotional state monitoring using long range high precision hyper-conducting quantum interference.”

“Okay,” said Karl slowly. He turned around, surveyed the state of the party. Lenah followed his gaze.

“We need to wake everyone up first,” she said, “wash away the drug.”

“It’ll take a while to force feed everyone.”

“Yes, too long,” she looked up, saw clear sky above them whilst on the horizon the grey clouds stacked high around the seed kites, emptying the moisture from the air, away from the party. “Is that anti-narc skin permeable?”

“Not sure,” said Karl, “we could work on it.”

“Do it,” said Lenah, “then bring the seed kites over the party and seed the clouds with the anti-narc. Bernie?” She pinged him over voice comms and he arrived a second later.

“You’re back,” he said, relief in his voice. He hugged her, squeezed her hard, held the embrace for an extra beat. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Thanks Bernie,” said Lenah. “I’ve got a couple of ideas we need to implement.”

It took a day to synthesise the skin permeable anti-narc, after which they moved the huge seed kites which flew high in the atmosphere above the party and coalesced the rain with emitted particles of dust. The clouds grew higher then broke, a cleansing wash, a wake up jolt, crash resuscitation. Clear! Zap!

They woke to a party-wide notification: the creation of a new game called Emo. To find that they had been assigned to a team and that their goal was to change the emotional state of the whole party. Ecstatic Thrills, Introvert Calm, Mellow Bliss, Focused Hyper, Bittersweet Happiness, teams to guide the party-goers’ state of mind. A game to balance the party and discover an acceptable equilibrium, to prevent destructive viral run-away moods and trends.

Within a week Lenah, Karl and Bernie had open-sourced the Emo code and hardware designs, the repo had been downloaded hundreds of times as Emo games sprung up all over the globe.

The party remained balanced and vibrant and relevant.

Karl and Lenah watched the orchestration dashboard of the Emo controller, glancing between the layer on their vision and the pulsing colours of the lights spread around the party which represented the state of the game. Ten days after its introduction and Emo already felt a core tenet of the party.

“It’s working,” said Lenah.

“Yes,” said Karl, smiling, “job done.”

They stood in silence and watched the party splatter off the anti-noise bubble in which they were encased.

“You’re leaving again,” said Lenah, turning to face him, searching his eyes.

“Yes,” said Karl, “other things to do.” He smiled. “I don’t need to say it, Lenah, but I will, come with me.”

She took a deep breath and forced a smile.

“No, Karl. More to do here, the party has more to give. It feels… right. It’s where I belong.”

“You could do more,” said Karl.

“Don’t ever say that again,” said Lenah, “I’m pissed off with you assuming that the party is an insular indulgence. Everything is open, the world is playing Emo, our repos are forked and watched and used. And look at everyone here!”

She turned back to the party, watched a huge inflatable zebra bounce across the heads of the crowd dancing in front of the stage where a band played, thrashing noisily around.

“I’m sorry,” said Karl, “but you could do more, you know that.”

She felt him put his hand gently on her arm but didn’t turn to him, couldn’t face the heartache. Felt the whoosh in her stomach as he jumped away, his warm fingers suddenly gone, leaving her arm cold. Leaving her alone with a hundred thousand people.

#

THE SMALL TANK of water rippled as the amorphous black blob at the bottom grew imperceptibly. Lenah watched it intently, despite the cameras capturing three different angles, despite the myriad of sensors and the ultra-fast real-time analysis engine responding to every nuance. She sat in a cabin that she’d come to think of as her workshop, tucked away in the logistics sector of the party. She’d printed the cabin from scratch, the composite aerogel carbon and graphene walls growing slowly as the scrubbers reclaimed the carbon from the air and fed it as feedstock to the printer. She’d not intended to colonise the space but after spending so much time there it had slowly become hers in a way that only hermits or luddites or stay-behinds ever lived anymore. The cabin was strewn with the physical output of Lenah’s imagination: a batch of single movement kite hinges with a fail time two sigma greater than the mean, a prototype desert track wheel for use on land-clearing robot bulldozers, fifty airtight drinks bottles containing a twenty percent more efficient rehydration liquid, six large screens showing half assembled code and a visualisation of possible outputs, eight large speakers grown from bamboo fibre stock dosed and aerated to lighten them which produced a bass that Lenah had never experienced before. All the clutter of an owned space, all ignored as Lenah focused on the small tank of water.

Bernie arrived beside her, the jump no more than a minor ripple of reality as the new release of Anywhere’s compensating algorithm calmed the reaction of Lenah’s body. She didn’t even look up.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Bernie, his voice efficient and clipped.

“As always,” said Lenah, glancing at the analysis dashboards on the screen beside the tank.

“Serious,” said Bernie. “Another splinter party, took seventy thousand people just yesterday, stormed the top of the league. They have momentum.”

“The league is a distraction,” said Lenah, looking up at Bernie, “which is why we agreed to not be a part of it.”

“But it shows something.”

“Yes,” said Lenah, “*something*. Who cares?”

“It’s the third splinter party this month. We’re losing our edge.”

“Let them splinter and go nova and burnout. This party will still be here.”

Bernie frowned, touched the edge of the tank and then flicked it, producing a pure chiming tone. He watched the ripples in the water, then looked up at Lenah sharply.

“We haven’t released a new feature for weeks,” said Bernie.

“It’s incremental improvement,” said Lenah, “continuous delivery. No big-bang releases.”

“So how come in those weeks you’ve open-sourced seven hardware designs and thirteen software modules?” He waved his arms around the cabin. “None of this stuff helps us Lenah.”

“Not true Bernie, the kite hinges are–”

“No one cares about that, Lenah. We need something new. For the party-goers.”

“Once we increase the efficiency of the party then we can change the focus from sustaining it to innovating.”

“We don’t have time,” said Bernie.

“We don’t have a choice.”

“I need you focused on the party, Lenah,” his voice was raised now, harsh and angry. “I don’t want us resting on our laurels, I don’t want to be an attraction for the things we once did, for our timing and our luck. I want to be the best party in the world. I want to be a legend. I want to be a story that parents tell their children about, the story that’s recounted repeatedly as a vivid memory. The only party worth visiting. The non-stop party.”

Lenah scanned his face as he stood, tense, breathing deeply, looked for a glimmer of irony and found none, then she stood and clapped her hands slowly.

“I vote for you president Bernie.”

“You need to get your shit together,” said Bernie, jabbing his finger at her. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Growing land,” said Lenah. “In a tank.”

Bernie shook his head.

“Focus Lenah! We’re jumping in ten minutes. I’m overriding the algorithm, we’re going to a mid-Pacific platform and I want you smoothing the transition and troubleshooting from the moment we arrive. Got it?”

Lenah felt a flare of anger at his order but took a deep breath, controlled it, felt a strange concoction of ambivalence slosh around her.

“Bernie–”

“Start producing Lenah.” Then he jumped. Gone.

Lenah jumped too, to a hill, overlooking the party which nestled on the prairie like a slow churning monster. From a distance she could feel the bass, driving through her, see the fast flicker of party goers arriving and leaving at the edges, hear the buzz, the cheers, the music. Almost taste the food from the serveries with their pseudo-fried doping tastes and sweet fake unhealthiness. But she didn’t feel the joy, the belonging, the pride. She tried to shake off the hollow feeling inside her, the restless ache when she thought about the party.

“Karl?” she pinged him over voice, not knowing where he was, just that he was not there with her, somewhere else, could be anywhere. He arrived two minutes later and she hugged him before he could even say hello, arms hard around him as she fought back the swell of emotion.

“Hello, Lenah,” he said with a smile as they finally parted. He looked fit, lean and muscular, face radiating confidence and purpose. All the things that Lenah felt she lacked.

“Hi Karl, you look well.”

“Thanks. You look…”

“Tired?”

“Anxious.”

She nodded, turned to face the party and tried to coalesce her feelings.

“You’ve been productive though,” said Karl, “I’ve been following your repos. Good stuff.”

“Not according to Bernie.”

“Well,” said Karl, with a light laugh, “he was always single-minded.”

She felt a flutter inside her as he said the words, a moment of acute realisation.

“As was I,” said Lenah.

“Perhaps,” said Karl.

“We built this,” she said, nodding towards the party, sliding her hands deep into her pockets and letting her shoulders slump.

“We did,” said Karl, “pretty cool”.

He smiled at her expectantly.

“It’s all gone wrong,” she said finally, her voice cracking as she said the words, the tears finally breaking loose.

“Hey,” said Karl, encircling her with his arms, bringing her closer, “don’t cry.”

“I just feel so trapped,” she said, sobbing now, “and anxious all the time, and alone. Where did all my friends go, Karl? When did I lose everyone? There’s something broken inside me that I can’t shake loose. I feel stifled. I feel like screaming.”

“It’s okay,” said Karl, “it’s really okay.”

“I just think… I… I don’t know…”

She pulled back

She swallowed hard. Stepped away so that she could look him in the eyes. Fought to control her breathing.

“All those things I’ve been working on, they’ve all got so much potential, or they’re useful now, but nothing seems to fit with the party. I’m trying to squeeze all those ideas in and it just doesn’t work. It’s so frustrating, it’s like I’m cornered and it hurts and my head just feels tight and…”

Karl nodded.

Lenah took another deep breath.

“I’m ready to leave the party,” said Lenah.

“Yes,” said Karl.

They hugged again.

Lenah felt something unlock inside of her. A release. A flood of relief.

“How am I going to tell Bernie?” said Lenah. “He’ll never forgive me.”

“He will,” said Karl, “eventually.”

“I’m sorry, Karl.”

“You don’t have to apologise.”

“I do. I was awful to you. I just didn’t get it.”

“It’s fine. Really. Hindsight makes these things obvious.”

The party moving countdown began, a five minute warning signal broadcast to everyone. The Emo game ended, calculating the final emotional states and flaring the winning team across the vision of all the players to a loud cheer.

“Hyperactive Happiness,” said Lenah. “Again. Second win in a row.”

“The Emo controller needs to generate some more subtle variations,” said Karl.

“Probably,” said Lenah.

“Come on,” said Karl, “let’s be a part of it. Down there.”

She nodded. They jumped, Anywhere synchronising their destinations, managing the proximity overlap and inserting them into the crowd.

They stood and watched the party rise to a crescendo around them, unshackled from the Emo game, excited by the imminent change of location, the DJ hyping them up and up. Screams of joy, dancing bodies, hands in the air, faces of pure happiness, infectious enthusiasm, a lust for now, for life.

Lenah held Karl’s hand as the countdown reached its final minute. They stood still, together, buffeted occasionally, resisting the call of the party, letting it swoosh around them.

“10!9!8!” A proclamation from party control to everyone there.

The chants loud and ecstatic.

“7!6!5!4!”

The party a swirl of static and chopped beats.

“3!2!1!”

The party jumped. Karl and Lenah stayed.

Everything went, leaving them standing on an empty prairie, the grass flattened and worn, tired from the revelry.

The silence enveloped them, pure and still and sweet. Lenah smiled.

“Okay?” said Karl.

“Yes,” said Lenah, “time for something else.”

“Agreed,” said Karl, “where to?”

Lenah checked her repos, overlaying the Hub dashboard on her vision, watched for a few seconds as their usage ticked upwards before dismissing the information and looking around her. Two small white clouds collided above them, merging into one against the backdrop of the cerulean sky.

“I think I’d like to stay here for a while first,” said Lenah. “Just for a while.”

Karl nodded and she grasped his hand tight, standing beside him, observing the rolling landscape before them.

James Bloomer has a PhD in particle physics (he studied Tau Leptons at CERN) and has probably forgotten more physics than most people ever learn. Nowadays he makes his living as a software developer. You can find him on Twitter @bigdumbobject or Github @jamesbloomer.

The post Non-Stop Party appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

UPON HEARING THE

She removed the dark wrappings from her face, shaking russet sand from her long blond hair. Her sunglasses remained on as though she didn’t intend to stay long. She perused the items on the dusty shelves: ancient robotic toys from bygone eras, metallic clockwork bodies and puppets patinaed with age.

Geppetto’s voice came out rusty and hoarse from lack of use. “Buongiorno. Let me know if I may be of assistance.”

Though the woman wandered past the dolls, Geppetto saw she wasn’t looking at them, but at the floor instead. He leaned on his cane, waiting for the stranger to admit she’d gotten lost. People never wanted custom made marionettas these days. Not when they could buy a newer, cheaper model at the shopping plaza. The most business he ever got was when some child had broken a Turbo-delux Robotic Playmate or the Betty Bionic Doll and that blasted Robo Toy Central did a shoddy job fixing it. It was the grandparents who took such items to expert craftsmen. But this woman had no child in tote, and no mechanised doll would ever fit in that tiny purse of hers.

He tapped his foot with impatience, ready to get back to the only repair job he’d had in weeks.

The woman cleared her throat. “You are Signore Geppetto, the inventor, yes?” Her Italian accent gave her Earth heritage away.

He nodded.

She stepped closer, the sweet, Earth vanilla of her perfume overpowering the constant sulfur scent of Mars’ artificial atmosphere. “You build toys. Puppets and dolls? Custom made, no?”

He gestured toward the shelves. “These are some of my creations.”

She smiled, burnt sienna settling into the creases around her mouth. That countenance was familiar, perhaps that of a customer who hadn’t been in for a spell.

“I want you to build me a doll that looks like a human child. You can do this, yes?” She dug in her purse for a holo-phone, scrolling through screens with trembling fingers before finding what she searched for. She bit her lip, holding up a faded and crackly holographed image. The quality was so poor, Geppetto had to put on his glasses to behold the little girl in pigtails, about two years old. It was hard to imagine a sleek, new phone would have such a poor quality image. He’d swear the file had to be thirty years old to be that deteriorated.

The woman’s voice hitched mid-sentence. “You can make her … look like this?”

AH, YES, ANOTHER mother wanting to resurrect a dead child who either died of the Martian flu or couldn’t breathe the caustic dust upon immigrating to the red planet. Geppetto sucked on his remaining teeth, fighting skepticism. Such jobs used to be the bread and butter of his business. These days, no one came to him for such a toy.

“I can build a robot child. As can Robo Toy Central. So why have you come to me instead of them?”

“You can be more … discreet, no? You do not have to keep records of my order. I can pay in cash. I will pay you now if you need to purchase supplies.” Desperation leaked into her tone. Her fingers were bone white, gripping that holo-image of the child to her heart.

Geppetto had seen desperate mothers before. He, himself, had been a desperate father once, ready to trade all his worldly possessions and even his soul if need be, in order to recreate the child he’d once had. He understood this woman wanted something more from him than Robo Toy Central could give.

Geppetto held out his hand for the woman and she took it, her lips twitching into a hopeful smile. He frowned into the black mirrors of her sunglasses. “I can’t bring back your bambina. I would be a liar if I said I could.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve never had a child. I need a new child who will look like me in that photo. I need you to create a child so real she could pass for human. A child with a soul who can grow old as we do, a child who can love—”

Geppetto held up a hand to stop her, understanding where this was going at last. “Ma insomma! No, no, no! What you ask is illegal. I do not do that kind of work.”

“But—”

“Do you not know the laws on Mars? Robotics manufacturers are forbidden from creating android children that can develop and mature. They cannot pass for humans, nor are they allowed to go unregistered as robots.” From the grim determination in that purse of her lips, he could see it wasn’t a lack of ignorance, but a lack of caring for the laws that compelled her to ask such a thing of him.

“But you did it once before! You created a puppet and he turned into a boy. He grew and had a personality; a child who had animo and could love.” She glanced over her shoulder as if looking for store surveillance. She lowered her voice. “I know you made Pinocchio.”

Geppetto stiffened at the name of his own child, sorrow and bittersweet memories resurrected. Not the memories of his own bambino who’d died of radiation poisoning back on Earth, but that of the indestructible child he’d built here. He’d told himself he had forgiven the betrayal of the child turned monster for stealing his blueprints and running away. He could overlook him snaring his clients and starting a toy empire of his own. It was the loss of a constant companion and devoted son that shattered the old man’s heart.

And somehow this woman knew of his estranged son as well as his secret.

GEPPETTO DABBED AT the sweat on his forehead with a sleeve. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You say Signore Pinocchio is a robot because he makes robots for a living. I have heard this jest before. People say the same about me.” Geppetto attempted to laugh, but it came out a choking cough. He spat a glob of iron-tasting phlegm into his handkerchief.

The woman removed her sunglasses, revealing a youthful face aged prematurely with the dust of the planet’s harsh climate. A bitter smile laced her lips. “I do know what I’m talking about. I am Pinocchio’s wife.”

Geppetto squinted at her, removed his bifocals and squinted again. Yes, he had thought her face familiar. He had gazed upon her image in the holo-papers years ago when she’d first become his son’s bride. No wonder she couldn’t go to Geppetto’s greatest competition, Robo Toy Central. It was owned by his son.

Geppetto sighed, melancholy settling over him. “He told you then? He has accepted what he is?”

She shook her head. “He says he’s human … he thinks he’s human. He goes to great pains to prove it lest anyone doubt him; showing how the red dust makes him cough, giving to charities as a human with a soul and conscience might, falling in love and marrying. But I know as only a wife knows. I count the seconds between his blinks; twenty-one seconds, twelve, five, twenty-two, forty, six, twenty-one. I notice how he never ages, how the sun and sand never mar the perfection of his face. I have never witnessed a lie pass his lips, just as it would be with an android. Then, two years ago, I accidentally bumped the panel in his neck when he was sleeping and it opened, revealing the gears and wires inside. My fears were confirmed. That is why I wish you to make me a child.”

“Because you can never have one of your own?” Geppetto asked, his heart breaking for her.

“Yes — no.” Tears spilled down the red-dusted face, leaving pale stripes along her cheeks. “More than that, I want Pinocchio to keep believing he is a man. I want him to keep loving me, to be the father of the child we do not yet have. I want to — I want him to be real.”

Geppetto nodded, understanding that longing himself. His chest still ached with emptiness over that yearning for a son. He’d risked being caught and imprisoned all for a child. And in one conversation, he’d lost that child. It had been his telling Pinocchio he wasn’t a real boy that had driven him away. The young man had exploded in a convulsion of rage, his program malfunctioning at the paradox; his creator and owner, who he had been programmed to love and try to please as a father, had stated the truth that he hadn’t been his real son—which in his programming was an incomprehensible lie.

And here was this woman telling him she would risk everything to do the opposite; to conceal the truth in order to ensure Pinocchio’s happiness. Could it be that she understood something in his son that he never had?

“I know he still thinks of you. When we stroll off the main street and onto these side alleys, he avoids looking at your shop. Yet, he gazes upon your holo-photos when he thinks I am asleep. Someday … perhaps he will wish to see you again.”

Geppetto snorted. He doubted that.

HER EYES GAZED into a distance he couldn’t see. “He will want to name the child after you.”

Geppetto shook his head at the naivety of the woman’s words.

There was no undoing the damage to his mechanical child’s psychology. His son would always be riddled with self-doubt and inferiority from this Pinocchio complex he’d created in him. All Geppetto could do was patch up the outside and hope some of his son’s doubt would dissipate. “Pinocchio will need an implant in his bionic tissues so that he will gradually develop wrinkles. He will need follicle modifiers in order for his hair to eventually turn gray. I will do this for you … for him. It must be as he sleeps so I can turn him off. In exchange for this, I will make one request of you.”

She nodded. “Yes, anything.”

“You must promise not to make the same mistake I made. You must never tell Pinocchio that he isn’t a real man. In order for him to love you, he will need to believe he is human and capable of love.”

She nodded again, hair flopping like one of the bambolas on the shelves.

“And if you love Pinocchio enough that you can do this for him, you can also do it for a child.” Geppetto’s eyes filled with tears. There was one more thing Geppetto could do to redeem himself. Only then would Pinocchio not doubt he was human. Still, it saddened him that his son could never know this gift would be from him. “I will make you and my son a bambina of your own. It will be up to you to simulate a pregnancy.”

Perchance fate would have it that Pinocchio wouldn’t repeat his father’s mistakes. Even if it was too late for Geppetto, perhaps Pinocchio and his family would have a happy ending.

Sarina Dorie is a first place winner of: the Golden Rose RWA Award, Golden Claddagh RWA Award, Allasso Humor Award, Whidbey Student Choice Award, and has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Bards and Sages, Neo-Opsis, Flagship, Allasso, New Myths, Penumbra and Crossed Genres. www.sarinadorie.com

The post The Pinocchio Complex appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

 GAME SAVED.

My hands were trembling. I opened the restaurant door. Hello, sir. No, I would like to keep my coat, thank you. Pig-faced meat-eater, I thought. The night had just begun and I was totally unprepared. Then I saw her, she was early, she waved, I sat right next to her. I must have had the most ridiculous smile on my face. How was your day, she said. My god, had she noticed I was staring at her breasts? My day was… I couldn’t think of a proper adjective, what’s a good word to describe a day? I really love your breast, I said. What? She was suddenly furious. I’m sorry, I meant your dress. She raised her hand, I think she was going to slap me…

PAUSE!

I took a deep breath. And a good look. Are you satisfied now? ‘cause it’s not polite to stare when the woman is conscious. Now save a picture and start again.

I mean, zoom first, then… No, wait, that’s pathetic! Delete the picture!

Reload.

My hands were trembling. Before I entered the restaurant, I reprogrammed my eyes to auto-focus on human faces, at least for the duration of the dinner. My cyber-brain had saved the data of my first experience to prevent me from repeating the same mistake. I opened the door. Hello, sir. Yeah, yeah, you can take my coat. Quick steps, heart-beating fast, faster, fastest. Hello, Elise. Hi, Rick, how was your day? Beautiful, I said. And how are you?

Dinner went better than I expected. I had only reloaded once when I saw the waiter bringing lamb chops to the nearby table. Lamb chops! I was so upset at the display of this mutilated CORPSE that my crystal eye popped and fell in my glass. Splash! She screamed as if she had seen a kind of monster! Everyone was pointing at me, I was embarrassed. Next time I repeated the dinner scene, I went to the kitchen first and had the chef-robots reprogrammed and the menu rewritten.

Game saved again. Just in case.

Afterwards we could go for a walk in the park, have an ice cream, maybe lie on the grass and watch the stars do nothing. The possibilities were endless. And if I didn’t like how it went, I could change it anytime I wanted. Restart from the last checkpoint. Piece of cake. Everything could go wrong but everything could be corrected.

She had Chocolate Apocalypse with Cookies from the ice cream shop opposite the park. I owned the shop, of course, as I owned the restaurant and most of the street. I had bought everything in the area after I learned she was living there. I told her I had just moved next door. Convenient but not entirely false. She had no idea who I really was, or what technology and power I had in my possession.

WOULD YOU LIKE to go for a walk? I said. Isn’t the moon beautiful tonight, she said. It’s brilliant and so are you. Thank you, Richard. Are you cold, I said. Very. Here, you can have my coat. What coat?

Fuck, I had forgotten it in the restaurant.

PAUSE.

Main menu.

Resume from the last save? No. Load game menu. The restaurant scene. Are you sure you want to delete the last save? Yes. Loading screen. Music. In front of the restaurant again. My hands trembling. I entered, she waved, I sat opposite her.

You look tired, she said.

Very, I replied.

After another successful dinner scene, I skipped the ice cream part and proposed we went directly to the park. She didn’t mind. I wished I could skip time as easily but that wasn’t possible. My implanted time machine couldn’t get me to an undecided yet future nor could I travel to an unfamiliar past. I could only restart from a previous save-point, which came in handy when I wanted to win the lottery, edit a past experience or save the people I liked from dying.

Actually, that’s how I met her. I had saved her from a car accident. I was the absent-minded driver who had run over her. Of course, when the day was repeated, I spent it at home. She’d never know I saved her.

It was getting late.

Do you think we should get going? said Elise when there was no other path to walk but the way back.

PAUSE.

Let’s try some different answers. Game saved.

RESUME.

Are we going to my place or your place?

Slap!

It was worth a try.

RELOAD.

No, I said this time. Let’s stay a little longer.

Why?

Because… well… why not?

RELOAD. PAUSE.

What should I try next? Just go for it. Look her in the eyes and kiss her.

RESUME.

Kiss.

Slap.

Reload.

PAUSE.

THINK. THERE SHE is, in front of me, smiling. A woman with human eyes and a sense of humor. Hasn’t got a clue what a loser I am, what a coward. How many years I had spent planning that night. How many nights experimenting on my brain. And how many times she had already slapped me in a past I alone had experienced.

You know, it’s a horrible thought but I could probably use my technology to manipulate her in more direct ways if I wanted to. Other people would. But that’s not what I needed – I needed her to truly love me, to be kind to me, to care! Because no-one else would, and I had saved her life the other day so she was obliged to care for – no, that’s a horrible thought.

Reload.

I think I had been talking too much about myself. Plus, I couldn’t stand the waiter’s face. DO YOU EAT CHILDREN WITH THAT FACE, PIG-MAN? Damned omnivore pervert. My nerves. Next time I’d kindly ask him not to chew chicken legs in front of me.

Reload.

She liked it when I held her hand during our walk. Information saved. Next time the action would be performed by the body automatically.

Reload.

More dialogue before kiss. Discuss relationships. But the only info I have for the subject comes from movies. Then quote from the damn movies! What? It worked. But why? Under different circumstances she would have slapped me. I had never read a book on people, only on science, but it seemed I needn’t, those original a-hundred-percent-meat humans were always unpredictable. Now we were suddenly preparing for copulation and I couldn’t believe my eyes! It all seemed so easy all of a sudden. Wait, I forgot something…

Reload. This time, buy a condom. Resume.

Back in the park. Finally ready. Game saved.

She takes off her clothes. My God, record this! Use the mechanical eye to record it. Save the experience!

PAUSE.

That’s perfect, take a picture.

RESUME.

Keep recording. She laughs. Don’t you adore her innocent giggle breaking the silence of the night? Suddenly, I have no vulgar thoughts in my head. In neither brain.

PAUSE.

Precautionary measures. Radar confirms we’re alone in the area.

RESUME.

Me and her, both naked by the lake. At last, after all this time. Treasure the moment. Save game. What’s wrong? Repeat action, save game. Error. What error? WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

We lie down, she gets on top of me.

What do you mean error?

Sweetie, what’s wrong?

My hands were trembling. I was sweating all over. Heart-beating like crazy. “No available save slots”? Have to delete some of them immediately. Delete, delete!

Talk to me, Ricky, what’s wrong?

Delete last saved file. Delete first restaurant experience. Delete image of breasts. No, undelete that! Not possible? Fine, I can live without it. Delete more saves. Now reload to when she started stripping.

FILE CORRUPTION?

What’s the problem with you, Rick, who are you talking to?

Oh God, I said that out loud. Connection between brain and mouth: unreliable. Possible cause: data overload. I was doomed. Is there any chance you’ll escort me to my laboratory, I asked Elise.

What laboratory? What are you talking about?

She was putting her clothes back on and I couldn’t even pause time! How was I supposed to think so fast? I couldn’t! Without my technology I was invalid! Also, quite possibly, my latest saves were destroyed. My real brain had archived most of the stuff of course, but only as useless memories. My better brain was malfunctioning. And I had to make love to this woman that night or else I might never find the courage again!

What are you whispering? Talk to me!

I HAD NO OPTION. I confessed everything – well, almost – I talked of my gaming addiction, my cyborg brain, my research. I had no idea how she would take it as I hadn’t stored a similar experience in my database before, but in the end, I needn’t worry. Whatever she’d do, I’d delete the unpleasant experience when I’d go back to my lab to repair the machine and reload from the restaurant scene. No, wait, what restaurant scene? What if I couldn’t retrieve the relevant files? What if I could only return months back in time, or even years? Would I have the patience to start all over again? What if all my files were ruined? What if there was no past I could return to?

I had to act quickly and suffer this unbearable unrehearsed reality. I tried to convince her I loved her and had tried everything to be with her. She wouldn’t believe a word. Instead, she laughed, as if a victim of an unsuccessful farce.

Are you mad, she said.

No, I’m not! I’m good! I’m a nice person, a vegan, an ecologist, a scientist – all I’m trying to do is be kind with you and gentle but I’m beginning to LOSE MY FREAKING MIND!

I had shouted at the top of my voice. Out of control. The computer couldn’t prevent me from committing unreasonable behavior. I was suddenly under the total control of my body. My hands, as if by their own will, touched her face and my lips pressed violently against hers. What was wrong with me?

I saw the fear in her eyes, but also the threat. Suddenly life didn’t feel like a game anymore. Elise exploded. Like a wild cat in defense, she attacked me while screaming names. PSYCHO! PERVERT! NERD! All accurate accusations.

I tried to defend myself but could not. The martial art knowledge that was stored in my second brain was inaccessible. I barely blocked a slap but got kicked in the balls right after and fell down crying.

Please listen to me, I begged, I know, I come from tomorrow night! We have to make love today, otherwise THE WORLD WILL END!

I was lying of course. I was desperate. She said I was lucky she didn’t call the cops and turned around to leave. Wait, I said. Everything I’ve told you is true. Please stay with me. Now that my inner computer’s out of work, I’m vulnerable and scared.

Oh, poor thing! And you want me to protect you?

Don’t you understand? I can no longer start the day again, so if anything goes wrong… My game… My life…

I was telling her the truth, I was more vulnerable than ever. Normally, if I suffered any serious injury or even died, my body would auto-restart from the last checkpoint, so I’d be always safe. But now the system was down and I was in pain.

She stared mercilessly at my crying face. From where I was lying, she looked like an all-mighty giant. I thought that if she stepped on me, she’d crush me.

You’re a liar, she said. You made all this up for what purpose? To get laid? Or do you really think life is a game you can play with? You’re seriously fucked up.

She left me there in the cold, in the dark. I was scared as hell. My hands were trembling and I sucked my right thumb like a baby, wishing the fear would go away. I hid behind a bush and waited for the sun to rise. It took forever but when it did, I ran away as fast as I could.

When I returned to my lab and repaired my cyborg-brain, I searched for any retrievable files. Only an image of her face had been saved. Those big blue eyes. But no checkpoints whatsoever. That meant I could never go back to the past. It also meant she could never be mine.

In tears, I deleted the image. I wish I could remove her memory from my human mind as well. I cannot. My only hope – if I want to delete this experience of failure – is to remove the brain.

Christos Callow Jr is a Greek writer studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and researching utopias of perception at the University of Lincoln, UK. His stories have been published in Polluto, Sorcerous Signals and The Mad Scientist Journal. christoscallowjr.blogspot.co.uk

The post Gameplay appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

I WAS ON HAND when the much-awaited Darling baby was born, hoping ghoulishly for the expectant mother to pop out a tentacled monster or red-eyed vampire child. No such luck. The critical hour passed and Bruno Darling sailed into the waiting room, newborn in hand. A brawny arm lofted the white-wrapped bundle, exactly as he had footballs during his NFL years. We caught a glimpse of a tiny gurgling face and Bruno vanished back inside.

“Disgustingly normal,” I muttered from behind the plate glass.

A Times reporter beside me said dryly, “For a minute I thought he was going to spike the kid.”

“It woulda been a story at least,” I said, unable to keep a glum tone from my voice.

A woman from one of the online gossip rags bore a dreamy look. “What an adorable baby.”

We both glared at her.

“Boy or girl?” asked someone in a fedora.

“Does it matter?” I demanded, and stalked off.

It was unreasonable to be so annoyed, but I hadn’t wanted the assignment in the first place. I still considered myself a serious journalist. While the others waited to interview Bruno, I left with an off-duty candystriper I met downstairs, got smashed, and failed to file any story whatsoever. I got fired, and the world forgot the Darling baby. For a time.

*****

I HAD COVERED the Darling nuptials the previous year. “Superbowl Hero Marries Mega Pop Diva.” Bruno had lost his team two Superbowls and Annabel Ann was a fading star, but a good reporter never lets facts stand in the way. Other babies had been genetically tailored, but theirs was the first to receive artificial genes. Genes created from scratch, not taken from other living creatures.

It was a time of great strides in medicine and genetics. With quantum computers simulating proteins and other complex organic molecules, the effects of a drug or faulty gene could be solved mathematically, rather than inferred through years of testing. But developmental biology remained a field largely untapped. The mystery of how a single cell developed into an organism like the human body.

Enter Massimo Pazi. The biologist made headlines with his billion-dollar neonatal cure for Down syndrome. He turned his hand to tooth budding, and quickly put half the world’s dentists out of work. Rolling in a tsunami of money, he went on sabbatical, joined a sect of Kabbalah, bought a private island in the Aegean, and disappeared like Superman into his fortress of solitude.

He resurfaced two years later, sporting dreadlocks, kaftan, and a retinue of steely-eyed Albanian bodyguards. The occasion was a theatrical and rather bizarre press conference. Bemused reporters listened as the doctor announced what he called the “Grand Duodecalion.” Pazi claimed the set of twenty artificial genes would unlock a “hitherto hidden pathway of human development.” He was vague on concrete details, but the genes seemed to offer equal parts of transcendent intelligence, improved health and digestion, and theosophical enlightenment.

With Copland’s Symphony for the Common Man blaring in accompaniment, a blazing-eyed Pazi offered his advance freely to the world.

Fellow Kabbalite Annabel Ann accepted. Almost before the press conference ended, the singer boarded her private jet, clutching an overnight bag and a cryovial of her husband’s sperm. A week of sun in the Med, and she returned to L.A. with an in vitro bun baking in her well-tanned oven.

Three months later, Pazi’s press secretary issued a terse statement. The doctor’s calculations had been in error. The effects of the twenty new genes were – to Pazi and the rest of the scientific community – entirely unknown.

*****

AFTER THE BIRTH, dabs of news trickled reluctantly from the Darling household. A discharged housekeeper sold a salacious tale of Bruno’s infidelities. Annabel was said to have taken to the dreamy consolations of oxycontin and gin bitters. But little Chase Darling stubbornly refused to display any genetic malformity. He was an absurdly beautiful baby, with golden curls framing a face of cherubic charm. Strangely good-natured also. Never cried, always smiling and affectionate. In a word… well, darling. The quintessence of maternal desires. His first birthday came and went.

Then it happened.

Morning at the Darling estate. Chase’s nanny hurried into the nursery, still buttoning her starched white livery. Both parents were out of town and she had overslept. The room registered her presence and clicked on the lights and activity panels. An autotronic rooster fluttered wings and crowed good morning. Reaching the bassinet, the yawning servant looked down.

Instead of angelic innocence, she saw a grisly heap of miniature body parts, twisted at odd angles. Raw flesh shone wetly. One tiny eye stared vacantly up from a skull that appeared to have been stretched like taffy.

The nurse promptly fainted.

An indefinite period later, she came to, head throbbing. The crib drew her eye magnetically. Had it been a hallucination? Unable to force herself up from the floor, she stared like a bird fascinated by a snake. Her heart thudded once, twice…

Little Chase’s head popped over the crib’s rail. He chuckled happily and stuck a thumb in his mouth.

The young woman’s chest expanded with a flood of relief that nearly choked her. She had imagined the entire horrible scene. Drawing breath, she directed a tremulous smile at the beaming infant.

Then little Chase’s head appeared over the rail. A second Chase, identical to the first. The nanny fainted again.

 *****

THERE’S COP CARS at the Darling estate,” my editor told me. “Hustle over. Dig up some dirt.”

It was a new job, even worse paying then the old. But with my inglorious employment history, I was a short step above begging for spare change on street corners. So I got.

The Darling manor was one of those grotesque cantilevered concrete jobs that no one but Southern Californians can stomach. The police had a cordon up, and a couple of other news types were already roosting at the front gate. I tried to pump them for information, but nobody knew anything.

“It’s gotta be an O.D.,” one of them said, watching a medivac chopper land with gloomy satisfaction. The other pointed out that Annabel was in concert in Macao, while Bruno was off hunting caribou in the Great White North.

While they argued, I stepped away, extracting my phone, and socialed up the names of the Darling staff. Placing a quick call, I invested three days salary in the best bribe I’ve ever made. Five minutes later, their cook sent me a grainy set of cell-phone photos.

Typing frantically from inside my car, I filed the scoop that made me famous. And the world learned of the Darling twins.

*****

PARTHOGENESIS IS THE generation of offspring genetically identical to the parent. Do-it-yourself cloning, in effect. Many plants can manage the trick, as well as a few lizards and other creatures. What the Darling baby had done was different. He had fissioned into two separate entities, like a single-celled animal. Organisms that do this are termed fissiparous. Chase Darling had joined the club.

We later learned that the entire process took nearly a week. The changes were internal the first three or four days. Nothing noticeable, other than a certain sluggishness of behavior. Then came a twelve-hour period where the child became quiescent, gradually assuming the appearance of a mutilated murder victim. Finally, two conjoined infants regained consciousness. When Chase’s nanny had seen him/them, he/they had been Siamese twins. Over the next few days, separation completed.

Unsurprisingly, the government immediately stepped in. For an infuriating period the public heard nothing. A nameless official declared it a national security matter, and the Darlings eventually had to sue in federal court to regain custody of Chases I and II. In the meantime a number of scientists reexamined Pazi’s original claims. They discovered that seven of the twenty altered genes weren’t artificial at all. The seven were part of the genetic makeup of Escherichia coli, a common and well-studied microbe. Chase Darling was part bacteria.

The disclosure generated a few crackpot threats, and the Darlings retreated further into their insulating cocoon of wealth. Annabel gave up all pretense of continuing to sing or act, a move that relieved more people than it disappointed.

For me though, these were happy times, days of thunder and glory. I no longer lived in a coinop, and I had traded in the ignominy of my little electric Skeeter for a sports coupe with a real engine. I spent my spare time driving up and down the coast, top down, the throb of its eight cylinders making my hindquarters feel like the supporting actor in a gay porn video.

But I had very little free time. I had exposed the Darlings to ridicule, humiliation, and possibly even physical danger – so, true to human nature, every two-bit celebrity in the biz suddenly wanted to bare their soul to me. My weekly column became a daily. Ghostwriters penned four exposés in my name. A software company created a social network game where a caricature of me, smoking my characteristic oversized panatela, helped players con their friends into revealing dirty laundry. I kept busy.

And I kept watch on the Darlings.

Their new servants were trained in secrecy by the Torquemada School of Obedience. Three days of my current salary was a year’s pay for most domestics, yet not a word would they speak. But some things couldn’t be hidden. When their housekeeper began buying four packages of size XS diapers rather than two of size M, I had another scoop. The Darling twins had become quadruplets.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the public appetite for prurient details was insatiable. And profitable. I traded my coupe for an Italian twelve-cylinder with an unlimited pollution certificate.

*****

BY YEAR FOUR, the Darling estate resembled the newborn ward of the L.A. County Hospital. The haggard parents resignedly turned back to the government for help. A hastily-assembled research team began to study the phenomenon in depth. They learned that twinning normally occurred every thirteen months. Overfeeding would speed the process; a starvation diet delay it slightly. The children were taxonified as a new subspecies: Homo fissiparous. A wag persisted in calling them “tribbles”.

Research shifted to preventing the twinning, to allow the infants to mature normally. The team found several biochemical pathways critical to twinning, but interfering with them had the same eventual result as preventing a cell from splitting. Death.

After two years, the researches threw up their collective hands in defeat. They relinquished to the Darlings 63 infants and one tiny coffin. This time it was the federal government that sued, to force the parents to accept custody.

I had long since given up asking for interviews. So it shocked me no end when Bruno himself called out of the blue. In ten terse words he peremptorily summoned me to the estate mañana. Before I could ask why, I was listening to a dial tone.

A wizened Russian babushka opened the door, old and mean enough to be Stalin’s own grandmother. A bulge on her hip made me think she was packing. “Put that stinking thing out,” she sniffed towards my cigar, leading me inside.

I could smell nothing but sour milk, but I stubbed it out in a passing potted plant.

Bruno awaited me in what was once a formal dining room, but now could only be called a mess hall. A row of twenty feeding chairs faced a large industrial-looking contraption that supported a tank of milk. I decided it was a high-speed bottle filler. “Well if it isn’t the smut rustler himself,” he said caustically.

I maintained a dignified silence. Bruno hadn’t called me to throw barbs, no matter how well placed.

He had gained loose flesh since I last saw him, and now a middle-aged fat man lurked beneath the skin of the hard-muscled athlete. He held a heavy square tumbler of scotch. From the flush of broken capillaries around his nose and cheeks, it was a favored companion. He looked at the glass as if he wanted to heave it at my head. “I should shoot you myself. If it hadn’t been for that story, I could have drowned the damned thing in a toilet.”

Secretly, I flicked on my recorder. Blame transference was a familiar step in the cathartic process of opening up.

Bruno silently tossed back the remainder of his drink. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Never marry a woman older and richer than yourself. I knew that clown Pazi had a few screws loose, but I couldn’t make Annie listen.”

Before he could continue, the far door opened. A line of women entered, each bearing a little bundle of joy. “Feeding time!” cried Bruno, giving me a ghastly leer.

With the efficiency of long practice, the women strapped their charges into the feeding chars and queued up at the milk machine. Twenty pairs of smiling china-blue eyes placidly awaited their bottles. The only sound was an occasional happy gurgling. It was the first time I’d seen the infamous infants up close. Rafael himself had never pained a more adorable cherub… though it was a bit spooky how well-behaved they were.

“They never cry,” said Bruno, as if reading my thoughts. “Never. But we have fifteen of these feeding sessions a day. In a year, it’ll be thirty.”

“And Annabel’s left the entire burden on you?” I inquired, hoping to prompt other disclosures.

He flushed. “That’s rot. Don’t believe your own sordid tales. Annie works harder than anyone.”

I followed the direction of his gaze. With a shock I realised one of the crisply starched nurses was Annabel herself, almost unrecognizable without her face paint and outrageous hair puffs. Her husband might be running to fat, but the one-time pop star had lost weight and now appeared stringy, almost gaunt. She popped a fresh bottle into a waiting mouth with ruthless determination.

“So the rumors of drug addiction…?”

“False. All false.”

He followed her movements with adoring eyes and I had sudden inspiration. “And your alleged affairs?”

Bruno’s expression because a trifle sheepish. “Annie’s idea. Good publicity, she said. Every affair was another ten million albums to her female fans.”

Annabel had approached while we spoke. She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “We didn’t ask you here to discuss my husband’s love life. We need your help. And we’re willing to pay for it.” She gestured toward the feeding line. “The children are being put up for adoption. We’ve formed a foundation to ensure they go to good homes, people able to care for their special needs.”

This was not unexpected; I had predicted the eventuality years ago. Her next words caught me by surprise though. “The Foundation will pay you twenty thousand dollars for every successful adoption.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I already have a job. And brokering an adoption for profit is illegal.”

“We don’t want you to broker anything!” barked Bruno, jowls quivering. “Just convince people to adopt the little demons!”

His wife shot him a warning glance. “What we’re proposing is perfectly legal, I assure you. The Foundation will handle all aspects of the adoptions. But your stories have painted our children as freaks of nature. Monsters. We want you to change the tone of your reporting, to help popularise the adoption program.” She folded her arms expectantly.

A pregnant pause. I had last seen her on stage wearing nothing but ostrich feathers and eyeliner, but Annabel Ann was no fool. She acted as her own manager and publicist, and had become a multi-billionaire through canny self-promotion and investments. The business offer was serious. I mumbled something about journalistic ethics, but the calculator in my head was already struggling to multiply twenty grand times 126 children. Wait – were they due to spawn again? My head spun.

An hour later, feeling like Faustus before Mephistopheles, I signed a confidential “memorandum of understanding” with the newly-founded Darling Foundation.

*****

AT MY DESK THAT night, I penned a rousing homily on civic duty and the virtues of adoption, a humanitarian appeal to aid the long-suffering Darlings. It was magnificent.

I read it and tore it up.

My second draft focused on the rarity and prestige of having your very own “darling”. It shamelessly commoditised the children, portraying custody of one as somewhere between owning a notable oil painting and winning the state lottery. They were the perfect accessory to the modern lifestyle: a child that would never grow up, never leave home. I stressed their sweet-tempered equanimity and transcendent good looks. Even twinning was cast as an advantage; it allowed one to gratify envious friends and neighbours with the annual yield. It was transparent, unadulterated, pathetic balderdash.

The public ate it up. Fifty sets of presumptive parents applied for every infant available. A year later, the next crop was adopted even faster. I had spawned a fad.

Time passed, and owning a darling became a craze hotter than pet rocks or Facebook accounts. Everyone wanted one. Fashionable women sported them like Vuitton handbags. Websites offered apocryphal tips on successful adoption applications. Consultants gave classes. There were darling fan clubs and appreciation groups, darling conventions and jamborees. A rather farcical event in Prague displayed and judged them like pedigree poodles, despite an utter inability to distinguish between any two darlings by anything but clothing. In Shanghai, black-market demand for the golden-haired novelty caused Chinese police to reinstitute the death penalty.

And every year, the darling population doubled. Half a million. One million.

The Darling Foundation remained active, advising parents and assisting with placements. My contract with them expired after the first round of adoptions, but I still earned an honorarium through appropriately slanted articles. I got married and my wife wheedled me into adopting one ourselves.

I secretly began buying shares of baby food companies.

Two million. Four.

The wheels began to come off. Like all fads, this one sputtered and died. New infants became difficult to place. Abandoned babies, still smiling and chuckling happily, began to turn up in airport and railway terminals, on street corners and even church steps, like a 21^st Century parody of a Dickens novel.

Most people are mathematically illiterate. The Foundation had been forthright with parents about the need for annual adoptions. But few grasped the implication that, if failed to do so, their one child would spawn a thousand in ten year’s time. Fewer still could handle the reality.

James Ho brought matters to a head. Unable to give away his darlings, the Bay Area podiatrist loaded all 32 aboard his (coincidentally) 32-foot yacht, sailed out into the Pacific, equipped each child with a set of inflatable water wings and a pre-signed adoption certificate, and bade them to swim to greener pastures.

Thirty-two murder charges later, Congress acted. The Darling Foundation became an arm of the Federal government. In five years, their staff outnumbered NASA’s, with satellite offices in 112 countries. But the problems grew faster still.

In Milan, rioters dug up the grave of Dr. Pazi and defaced the body. Annabel Ann went into hiding. My wife and I divorced. The separation decree required me to assume custody of our crop of darlings.

Sixty four million. One hundred and twenty eight.

The number may seem small compared to the world population, but in another ten years it will be 128 billion. That’s sixteen darlings for every man, woman and child on the planet. And a year later – double that again.

Insanity.

But what to do? A pseudonymous Internet satirist calling himself Younger Swift suggested broiling and barbecue sauce. Reaction was best described as nervous chuckles. Better ideas were in short supply.

What to do?

The Pope directed all Roman Catholics to pray a novena for a miracle. I hired a bodyguard. And more nannies.

Most of us shudder at the thought of putting down a kitten. Euthanise a bouncing baby boy? Horror. Kill several hundred million of them? Words fail. Especially not children so beautiful. Attila himself would quail before the trusting blue gaze, the engaging toothless grin.

A U.N. resolution requiring all couples to adopt at least one darling was resoundly defeated. It was a stopgap measure anyway.

I sold my baby food stock and bought Pazi’s old island. My darlings came with me. The ferry to the island had to make two trips.

What to do?

I don’t know, but I’m getting old. I intend to enjoy my few remaining years. In the meantime – if you want to adopt a child, I’m willing to pay. You can name your own price.

Lee Michael Ash is an ex telecom engineer and a failed physics graduate student.  He lives in the southern United States, and now writes full time.

The post A Darling Situation appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

“THERE AIN’T NOTHING to do,” Ole Anderson told Nick Adams, and he was both correct and incorrect. In his own timeline, he was right — the boxer had refused to take a dive, and so the killers killed him. In the infinity of other timelines that exist mostly in parallel to the one where there ain’t nothing to do, the Andersons that existed, and that were fighters, and who were not themselves actually fictional, had plenty of choices. Some take the dive; some give Nick that particular look, and a little nod of the chin, and then he produces a pistol and the hunted becomes the hunter. In another universe, Anderson is just a character in a story written by a man who’d grow famous, then old and sad. D. K. Lewis, the twentieth century philosopher, was right about modal realism — every fiction is a possible real world. Thus our business model. In the particular universe we’ve been hired to nudge and mold in a certain direction, Anderson is real, and he is a dead man.

Ernie was working at the Kansas City Star. He wanted to return home to Chicago. Now he had a reason — material for a story.

“What happened?” Ernie asked Nick. The resemblance was uncanny. They could have been cousins easily, brothers certainly. At a glance, twins. Nick was handsomer, a bit.

“I don’t know what happened. It was years ago.”

“I know, I was going through some morgue clippings. The story intrigued me.”

“Well, it didn’t intrigue anyone here,” Nick said. “I wasn’t the last man to see Ole Anderson alive, but I was probably the last man to see him alive who didn’t kill him.”

Ernie smiled. “Still a bright boy?”

Nick told Ernie what the killers had looked like. They were from Chicago. Nick didn’t know how they’d found Ole Anderson in Summit.

“They’ll be easier to find in Chicago,” Ernie said. He packed his gloves and trunks and jump rope. He took the train to the city, found a room, and found a gym. The next morning, Ernie showed up and did his press-ups, and his bicep curls, and three rounds of shadowboxing.

“How about that one?” Max said.

Al said, “I guess he’ll do.”

Ernie’s ears pricked up. He went to pound the heavy bag.

“I don’t know,” Max said.

“It’s fine,” Al said. “It’s easier this way. We won’t even have to convince him to take a nap.”

ERNIE KEPT HITTING that bag, working up a great sweat. When he was done, he walked over to the water fountain. Max and Al were on either side of it, smiling with their arms folded.

“Hey slugger,” Max said. “Not a bad straight left you got there.”

“A man can make a fair amount of folding money with a left like that,” Al said.

Ernie lifted his arm and flexed a bicep. “That’s my hope, gentlemen. My room over at the Oak Park Manor is a little cramped for me.”

“Man-or!” Max said. “Sounds swank.”

Al shook his head. “That’s a real doss-house. I’d call that false advertising. Nothing worse than fraud. Am I right, men, or am I right?”

“Indeed you are right,” Ernie said.

It was a peculiar scene. Ernest Hemingway was looking to break into the world of small-time prizefighting to uncover the truth behind the murder of Ole Anderson. Anderson’s own assassins, standing right in front of Ernie, were on the look out for a “professional opponent” for a contender their employer was grooming for the big time. Why pay someone to take a dive when a fine-looking young man with more confidence than ability had just sauntered into the gym? And all three were swimming in a cloud of timeline-sniffing nanobots. The hard part wasn’t even injecting the bots into the stream — yes, it takes a near-infinite amount of energy, but there are plenty of infinities to be had — the trick is to get the people to perform as needed for the desired outcome. Ernie was actually fairly easy. Egoists do what they need to do because they always think its their own idea in the first place. The trouble was Bob.

Bob sure didn’t like to travel. Mama was sick, and he had a story-writing schedule to keep, and his correspondence would pile up if he were gone for too long. With Ernie, all we had to do was plant a dozen variations on the Anderson story in the newspaper morgue, and then give him an excuse to hide down there. A large-hipped woman strolling through the newsroom was enough. Ernie could drink in the morgue. We left the file cabinet with the boxing clippings open a smidge. With Bob, we had to drain an entire universe just to get him to leave his hometown. We also set his house on fire.

Bob was sparring at the icehouse. He was a barrel in suspenders, shirtless despite the cold. He had his hands up at his temples, playing peek-a-boo. His man was an older cuss, slow but with hands and a chin of iron, and experience going spare. He peppered Bob with snappy left jabs, backing the young man up. “Stop fightin’ like a nigra!” the man roared. Then he fired an overhand right that rocked Bob. Bob threw out his arms and got the clinch. He tried to work a shovel hook, but the clinch was too tight. The crowd yelped and booed till the pair separated.

Bob threw a a pair of left jabs and hit his man on the button. The old-timer wobbled. Bob threw a right but just hit glove. He smiled and pounded a left into the old-timer’s liver. The man dropped his hand. Rob threw another left and landed it right on the button. The old-timer got his hands up. Two more right jabs, then a massive hook tore through the old-timer’s guard. Bob was headhunting now, with rights and lefts. The door to the icehouse flew open! Bob turned and took a right to the jaw, then went down hard, hit his head against the packed-dirt floor and lost three teeth. The nanobots blazed to life, tore up the universe — ancient Rome, your great-grandmother, the Sahara desert, the lichen under the ice of Europa that would now never be discovered, all that dark matter, distant galaxies, the whole thing — by chomping down on the eleventh dimension, the started again at the universe next door.

THE ICEHOUSE DOOR flew open! Bob caught a glimpse of the sheriff’s silhouette in one of the great blocks of ice over the old-timer’s shoulder, and threw a huge haymaker. The old-timer was unconscious when he hit the floor. Nobody passed crumpled bills back and forth, and nobody cheered. Bob wasn’t a knockout artist so most of the air in the icehouse was trapped in people’s lungs, just waiting to burst forth, but the ettiquette surrounding law enforcement demanded silence.

“Robert Howard,” the sheriff said. “Your mama said I’d find you here. You’d best come with me.” Bob, sheepish and boyish, held up his gloved hands. The sheriff quickly unlaced them. Bob’s hands were huge, red, untaped.

Outside, Hester Howard lay in the back of a buckboard, swaddled in blankets. “Mama!” Bob shouted, and Hester raised an arm.

“She was in a fire at the house,” the sheriff said. “She’d made it to the parlor herself, so it was a lucky day, but she was coughing up something terrible.” Bob had nothing to say. His jaw hung like a bucket. “Sorry for the wagon,” the sheriff said. “The proper ambulance was, uhm, unavailable.” Indeed, we had run it into a ditch via an inebriated fight fan wandering across the one road on the outskirts of Cross Plains on his way to the icehouse at the precise moment.

Bob needed to see his mother in a buckboard, her hair plastered to her forehead and shifting slightly in the breeze. Her bleached face under the great blue sky. A nineteenth century tableaux of a dying mother set before her son in the early twentieth century, just like an illustration in a dime novel he had seen once. True West, a man walking alone toward his fate, ready to make his way in the world with nothing but the shirt on his back and the sinews of his body. Finally, a man will do what he has to when his mama is off to a sanatorium for a good long rest.

“I’ll take him home, sheriff, if that’s all right with you,” Max said. “And with you sir, of course.” Max held out his hand to Bob and Bob shook it gladly. It as a workingman’s hand, callused, with fingers like bands of steel. Bob wasn’t well-liked in Cross Plains. He wouldn’t have taken a ride from a local. But a stranger, one he recognised whooping it up at his fight? Bob could stand to be obliged. He rode in the backseat of Max’s Model A. The first Model A in Cross Plains. Al rode shotgun.

“What do you fellows do?” Bob asked. For all his anguish, he was smiling, almost vibrating in the narrow backseat. Bob could have walked home easily, but he wanted company. He didn’t want to have to walk into the wind that blew over his land, and smell the soot of his home, taste the ash on his tongue, stride atop the charred and waterlogged remains of his manuscripts.

“Boxing and wrestling promotions and exhibitions,” Al said. He didn’t offer any more information till they reached the Howard place. It was standing, but barely. Mother’s room was relatively unscathed, but Bob’s was torched as though he’d left a lantern burning. His papers, gone. The pulp magazines he loved, cinders. The black case of his typewrite was solid, but the typebars had been wilted the flames. Bob cursed the heavens. He roared and beat his chest. He threw off his hat and kicked it across the ruins. Max and Alan let him get it all out. Men don’t need an audience when they rend their shirts and pull on their hair. Finally, Bob broke down into sobs, and gasped for breath through a wall of snot and tears. Max and Al watched, leaning against the Model A with their arms folded across their chests. They had all the time in the world. When the wailing devolved into a simpering, Al reached into the bag under the front passenger seat, and brought out a large growler of beer. He walked into the ruined house and offered it to Bob. Bob always brewed his own, against mama’s wishes. The growler was another way to separate Bob from Cross Plains, to get him back in the car.

“Your ma will be all right, Bob,” Al said. “She’s been away before. She’ll be back again.” Bob drank the beer and said nothing. “You might need to find a little day labor to get the homestead back up to snuff, however.” Bob just glanced up at Al, his irises swimming in rivers of red.

“You’ve got a good left combo. Men don’t see a shot to the liver, then another left. You can make some money with those hands.”

“You’re a boxing promoter…” Bob remembered.

“And I’m your friend. What do you say? We’ll drive you up to Oklahoma City, book you a real match. No two-bit smokers and we’ll split purse. You’ll get paid, win, lose, or draw.”

BOB DIDN’T HAVE any choice at all. With enough work, we could have moved Cross Plains to Oklahoma City, or swapped out that old-timer Bob manhandled for Ernie. And we have all the time there is to have, so arranging these events isn’t even a matter of opportunity cost, or scarcity. If it’s possible, we can make it happen. Godzilla destroying Tokyo — no. Adolph Hitler winning the American Civil War in 1863 — impossible. But two men who were alive at the same time and who had the same broad interests meeting, yes, that we can do, even if we have to kill a million people, or ensure that a billion are never born. We have thousands of thugs on salary; we recruit via classified ads, pay in gold bullion, and observe from… let’s just say from the gutters between the panels of the comic strip called spacetime. The trick is being able to read the whole strip all at once, eyes wide open. We practically work for free, since we already have anything and everything we want. We’re history buffs and elegance junkies, doing it for kicks.

Our clients like things subtle. “Just like the world I know, but with one leeetle change…” So we keep the massacres to a minimum. When someone wants something great, big and stupid, like a a twentieth century in which Latin is still lingua franca, we don’t change a thing. We just find a stream where it’s already so, and hope the customer doesn’t mind that the maps of Europe don’t include Russia, that there was never a Cold War, or a Dostoyevsky.

The client wanted to see these two get it on, so these two will be getting it on. When there ain’t nothing to do, you can do whatever you like. Getting Bob to the fight was easier than we thought it would be. Without mama and without his punishing writing schedule, he was pretty suggestible — and simmering with repressed rage ready to be unloaded on the first palooka put across the ring from him. Ernie made things difficult for us.

“I should stick close to Chicago,” he told Nick Adams.

“Uhm… I don’t know if I should be seen with you.” They were at a lunch counter in the Greek Delta. Ernie liked the keftedes. Nick was drinking soup.

“Anderson was killed nearby, in Summit. Whoever put out the contract used out-of-town muscle, but the ultimate villain is here.” Ernie’s eyes darted back and forth. “Could even be in this luncheonette.”

“Why would a big man like that be in a place like this?” Nick asked. He sipped his soup. The waitress hadn’t brought him a spoon, so he worked the bowl like it was a cup in his large hands.

“He could be anywhere.”

“But you don’t know where he is, that’s the point.” Nick said. “The two men who did the deed, they might know where he is. You find them, then you might find the big man.”

“Or be dead as Ole Anderson.”

“Scared?”

“I’m not afraid of those dirty little men, or of stepping into a ring if need be to gain their trust,” Ernie said. The waitress passed and Ernie put his cupped fingers to his lips, then pointed to his empty glass. “It might just be easier to get to the big man if those two thugs are out of town.”

“You think he only has two men? Tell you what — Mister Big isn’t in this greasy spoon, but one of his agents may well be.” Nick reached into his pocket and slapped some coins on the countertop. “It’s dangerous around here. It’s dangerous around you, Ernest. I’m leaving.” And he walked out, the bell on the door ringing behind him.

Ernie was alone. When Ernie was alone he grew agitated. The nanobots sizzled along in the rush of his blood. They can’t quite read minds, but they provided a picture of what Ernie was thinking — flashes of visual information. Ernie was a visual thinker; a “talkie” motion picture. He could go to a speakeasy, but the big man probably had eyes and ears in all those establishments. Ernie could visit a woman. They often had some alcohol stashed away, for the sake of visitors. But women like that were often in the employ of big men as well. Inebriated and helpless in the seductive arms of a woman, he would be easy to do away with.

And Ernie was grown ever more well-known. On his way to the luncheonette he saw someone in the middle of the street, leaning against a lamppost, reading his book. That was one of ours. If Ernie decided that he was being widely read even in Chicago and gained some confidence, we’d win. If he interpreted the silent encounter with the reader as a warning from the big man and grew anxious to put some miles between him and Chicago’s rackets, we’d win. We won, and he was on the train back to Kansas City the next day, and from there to Oklahoma.

Professional boxing wasn’t exactly legal in Oklahoma, but it had been more than a decade since governor Lee Cruse used the National Guard to break up fight cards. The the fairgrounds were available and KFJF broadcast the fights live. As neither man was local, Bob and Ernie were at the bottom of the card, and they were to face one another while the crowd was still finding their seats.

MAX CORNERED BOB. Alan cornered Ernie. It was a catchweight match at best — Bob was a slab of man-beef, and Ernie thirty pounds lighter. But Ernie wasn’t there to fight; he was there to get in good with Max and Alan, to find the big man who killed Ole Anderson. Bob wasn’t there to fight either. He just needed something to think about other than mama, and the ring would do. Mouth guards wouldn’t make it out to Oklahoma for another year or two.

That’s what he got. Ernie came out swinging hard, looking to offset Bob’s weight advantage. He swarmed, getting Bob to cover up. Bob played peek-a-boo, and jabbed back, looking for an opening. Then he got a clinch and threw Ernie across the ring. The fans booed. Ernie smiled. Bob threw a big right, then another, but Ernie bobbed, then punched the air out of Bob’s lungs. It seemed like only seconds, but the bell rang and the round was over.

“What should I do?” Ernie said.

“Stick and move,” Alan said. “Let me tell you something about your opponent…”

In his corner, Bob was breathing hard. He didn’t want to be here. Oklahoma smelled different — like dry mold, like sickness. There were other ways to make money than prizefights, and this one wasn’t even a fair bout. Max rubbed Bob’s shoulders and told him to keep his mind on the purse. “You can fix the house up something nice,” max said. “You just cut off the ring and give him that left.”

The pair touched gloves. Ernie said something that Bob didn’t hear, so he said it a second time. “Pulp writer!” Bob’s face was stone. “I’m a real writer,” Ernie said. Ernie threw a straight right. Bob’s chin snapped up, and he swung a huge left to the body. Ernie inhaled sharply, and tattooed Bob’s face with jabs, then shot a left uppercut into Bob’s gut. He backpedaled and put down his left, playing a low guard.

“C’mon chubby. You’re just a fat little kid, aren’t you?”

It was down to miliseconds. Bob threw that left to the liver, but it glanced off Ernie’s arm. Ernie swung his left, then a quick right to the jaw—a classic bolo punch. Bob crumbled, then fell to his knees. Ernie took his time getting to his corner, and Bob was up at eight. He was huffing hard now, throwing wild rights and lefts. Ernie covered up till the bell rang. Then, Bob didn’t answer the bell for the third. He just sat on his stool, Max’s shouts a distant tinny buzz in his ear, and took the loss. So we lit that universe up and tore it to charmed quarks.

“…You’re just a fat little kid, aren’t you?”

Bob threw that left to the liver, then up to the ear. Ernie threw a right and Bob counterpunched. Reach told the story. Bob found jaw. Ernie found air, then canvas. We shot ahead. Life wasn’t bad for Bob. He had a few more pro fights before returning to Cross Plains, and won all them save one. His first boxing story, “Cupid vs Pollux” was good enough for a professional market. The fire was never far from his mind, but there would be no “lift me on the pyre.” Bob lived to see the Second World War, and a wote a series of stories about an enigmatic double agent called the Crimson Monk, who worked behind enemy lines in support of the Allies while appearing in public as Hitler’s “number five man” and “official librarian of the occult and the bizarre.” He died in a drunken car accident in 1943.

We want a Hemingway knockout too. Bob gets up for the third round. He’s gassing badly, but still game. Bob ain’t no sissy. He crouched and stomped ahead, swinging great hooks and crosses. He filled the ring and got Ernie up against the ropes, then just leaned on the smaller man in the clinch. The ref broke them up, Bob clinched again. The spectators grew restive, booed. Ernie got his elbows up and made a little room in the next clinch. He fed Bob a few jabs, teasing him, pushing some sweat into the bigger man’s eyes. Bob crouched and lunged again and Ernie put out his right hand,then pivoted as Bob roared past him. It was a textbook check hook — grace under pressure in spades for Bob, who ate the punch to the flank of his face for dinner, and canvas for dessert.

Ernie got drunk that night, not realising how much water he’d left in the ring. Ernie was out on his feet by 9PM, and woke up on the train back to Chicago, a ticket in his breast pocket and his single valise gone missing. In Chicago, Nick was gone. Ernie spent a few days sniffing around the boxing gym, telling the story of his pro fight and looking for the big man. The purse money vanished over the well-polished bartops of the city. Ernie returned to Kansas City and his job.

In later years, Ernie was haunted by the big man who had the Swede put down. Anderson was like an old dog who knew why his master had taken the long gun down from the mantle and whistled for him, but who answered his master’s whistle regardless. But Ernie never knew why. In nine universes out of ten, Ernie ended his days with a W. & C. Scott & Son shotgun. He peered down the long black hole of the double barrels for a moment before putting the end of the shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

In one universe out of ten, Ernie remembered the name of his opponent written on the card outside the tent. Robert E. Howard. Years later, after the war, Ernie was fat and sick, and living on Hollywood money for The Killers. He caught the matinee one day, and found himself on the streetcar, sitting across from a bookish young man whose nose was buried in an unusual book. On the cover, a woman in white raised her arms while before her a one-eyed manlike creature levitated and brandished a smooth green gem. The title, Skull-Face and Others. Ernie squinted to make out the name of the author — Robert E. Howard.

Ernie found a copy. The title story was about a young hashish addict. “My universe crashing to pieces about me, and my nerves humming like taut piano wires for the vital need that was mine, I crouched in the gutter…” He stopped reading and put the book on his lap.

“My universe…” Ernie said. Our nanocloud picked up a fleeting mental image of Ernie, years after his fight but still vital, standing under an African sky with an infinity of stars swirling overhead. For a moment Ernie understood who the “big man” was. When he took up his shotgun and looked down its side-by-side barrels and into the sensor arrays of the nanocloud in this one universe, he winked at us before pulling the trigger.

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including the recent Bullettime and the forthcoming Love is the Law. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and many other magazines and anthologies.

The post Bob and Ernie Fistfight in Heaven appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

FOR SEVEN YEARS, I watched the water swell and settle, always drawing a new shore line until it lapped against the stone foundation of the old house. The rains had come, and with the rains, the floods. Every year, more land was swallowed up and not returned. Creeks grew into rivers and rivers into lakes. Rooftops butted out of the waters from houses that would never be reclaimed. At best, if the waters receded, the houses would be demolished. New lines would be drawn on maps to mark new flood plains, but no new homes would be built there. Until then, their shining metal roofs stood like tombstones in a sea.

After the seventh year, we all knew the old family home wouldn’t last through another rainy season. It already had a disconcerting waterfront view, an ancient lake house idly watching the water come closer. By this time, I was living further up Chestnut Ridge with my husband Nelson. I could look down the mountain and see the wide expanse of new water, like a rippling blue-green meadow. At the water’s edge, if you knew how to look through the stand of hemlocks and oaks, you could see the old house. My great uncle lived there, the last of our branch to carry the name Cunningham, the last to haunt the old house.

I dreamed the house would float away. They were quiet nightmares, where I watched the house give itself to the water like a virgin bride. Uncle listened when I told him about the dreams, and tears came to both our eyes. We cried for all that had been lost and for the deeper loss we knew was coming.

During the heat and sticky summer days of the eighth year, we worked. We moved the physical evidence of our ancestry — photo albums, trunks of old clothes, paintings from the walls — from Uncle’s home to our house higher up the ridge. Uncle was in no hurry to leave the homestead. Sometimes he resisted and acted resentful, but on other days, he brought his own offerings — books, our grandmothers’ china settings, antique toys from other generations.

PAST FLOOD SURVIVORS had built a city of homes on the mountain’s crest, and Nelson spent most of August there working to help beat the start of the rains. The new houses were so far up the mountain, the fear they would blow away in the wind outstripped the fear they’d flood. If the water ever reached that high, there’d be no hope for any of us.

One morning after the noise of Nelson’s truck had disappeared into the woods and up the mountain, Uncle came for me. He carried a canvas satchel that jangled when he moved and a shovel with a sharp point. He leaned on the shovel like a walking stick. “Come let’s go for a walk,” he said.

I watched for copperheads as I followed him over trails he had known since he was a boy. I had travelled them too, but not in a long time, especially in these flood years.

“Remember every step we take,” he said. “It’s important. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Things about the future.”

“About the rains?” I asked.

“Aye. The rains will come again and again. They’ll not end ‘til this world is washed away.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “I know you don’t want to leave your house, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.”

“It does for me.”

A beech tree towered over Chestnut Ridge’s highest point. We stopped under its shade. I could see the whole valley below us, more of it than I could see from Uncle’s or even higher at my house. A pair of hawks glided in circles over the valley filled with water. It flowed forever into the distance, calm now and peaceful. I knew it was truly mean and terrible, and yet there was that part of me that watched the sun above the horizon and the sun’s reflection on the water’s surface, magnified and swirling with gentle pinks and violent purple streaks of light. I was filled with guilt, but God help me, it was beautiful and I loved it.

“One of our people named this piece of mountain Chestnut Ridge,” he said. That was over three hundred years ago, long before the great chestnut was blighted out, a harbinger of things to come. “That first Cunningham wrote a journal about being the first white man to settle on this ridge, though later, he mixed his blood with Cherokee and Portuguese. He wrote about the size of the chestnut trunks that lorded over the valley. Now, they’re all gone. The last of their stumps rotted away when I was a child. Not hardly any mark of the chestnut is left.”

What Uncle didn’t say, but what we both were thinking, was that the Cunninghams were all gone, too, except for the two of us.

THERE WERE A FEW others like me, who carried the old Cunningham genes, but had lost the name. I had been born Arlene Cunningham, but I had married a man with the Spanish name Fernando. He carried musical quality in his speech that caused him to speak my name like a songbird would sing it — Arleeeena — so that every day I became a little less Arlene Cunningham and more Arlena Fernandez.

“You know what kind of tree this is?”

“A beech,” I said. I knew because of its pale grey bark, perfectly smooth and pleasant to feel. It called out for human hands to touch it, and we both did. After a few minutes in silence, we released our holds. He stepped away from the beech’s roots and began to dig. He soon became winded, and I relieved him of the shovel.

“How wide?” I finally asked. “How deep?”

“That’s enough,” he said after about a foot and a half.

As I stepped away and rested my weight against the shovel, he unlatched his bag and removed a handful of forks and knives and spoons. Into the hole, he deposited this cutlery. First one handfull and then another and another. I knew my great-great grandmother’s silver cabinet sat as empty as if it had been robbed. For good measure, he slipped in a handful of coins, old pieces both silver and gold, until his satchel was completely empty.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“In the Civil War, our people had to hide our valuables. The south came through and then the north. Over and over again. But no one took the silver. Because it was buried somewhere secret.”

“This isn’t a war,” I said. “It’s the weather. You can’t fight the weather.”

“Don’t ever tell anyone where it is. Not even Nelson.”

“Nelson wouldn’t steal your silver.”

“It’s your silver now. But not the you that is you now. This silver belongs to the you that you’ll be after the rains. Don’t tell Nelson for his own sake. He might come here and take the silver thinking he’s doing something for you. If he did, you’d hate him, and Nelson is a good man. He doesn’t deserve your hate.”

“Then don’t make me keep secrets from him,” I said.

“Everyone needs a secret or two. Just to keep your heart warm,” he said. “Do as I tell you, this one time if never again. Remember this old beech tree. The water will rise above its roots one day, but it will stand firm against the tides. Come back one day for this nest egg. But wait until you need it the most.”

“Uncle, when will you leave your house and come live with Nelson and me?”

“Fill the hole in,” he said. I raked the dirt back into place, covered it over with the leaf litter from past years. While I did this, Uncle scooted over a big square stone. I realised we had just made a grave. It held the past and the future and everything in-between.

IN SEPTEMBER, UNCLE decided Nelson could bring the pickup and move his furniture. There was so much: beds and tables and chairs and sofas and shelves of books and brick-a-brack. There was not room in our little house for everything, and some pieces were weeded through and carried higher up the mountain to the new settlement. The homestead grew less significant in our minds, but still, Uncle wasn’t ready to leave.

“This is where I’ll stay until I can’t stay any longer,” he said.

Nelson and I knew the rains would begin soon, but we couldn’t force Uncle. My dreams continued.

“Heavenly Father, please give the old man sense!” I prayed. Feeling guilty about this kind of prayer, I started again in any number of variations.

“Father, please convince Uncle to leave the old house.

“Father, please save this old man I love.

“Father, please let the dreams stop.

“Father, please don’t let the rains come this year.”

“Father, please do let the rains start so Uncle will finally leave.”

This was the only prayer that was answered. At least in part.

Before the rains came, there were the winds. It was a warm October evening. Nelson and I dug the last of the potatoes from our garden. We worked fast so we wouldn’t have to dig through mud later. Every year, as supplies became more difficult to find, as the floods cut off more and more roads for longer times, our garden had grown. In the back yard, we had a hothouse where we raised vegetables and greens all winter. All summer, we canned and preserved food for the long, wet winter to come. This sort of sustainable living was how my ancestors had survived, but they hadn’t taught those talents to me. Grocery stores had sustained my parents. Boxed and refrigerated meals had fed my childhood. The most I could hope for was some genetically inherited memory, a sixth sense of sorts that allowed me to know exactly when and how deep to push each seed in the soil.

Nelson knew little more than me. He was educated as an engineer, but his muscles inherently recalled how to hold and work our garden tools. To dig the potatoes, he firmly pushed the four tines of his pitchfork into the packed earth. Sometimes he would tap his heavy boot onto the head, all of his weight pushed into the ground and then shifted to reveal the potatoes to the evening light. That night, he came to the garden without his shirt, and I could see his trapezius muscles tighten between his neck and shoulders as he pushed and pried. The muscles on his sides flexed like wings as he moved. He wielded the devil’s tool, but he was a brown angel covered in dirt and sweat, his skin the same color as the potatoes I pulled from the ground. Though my job was easier, it was all I could do to pick them up and place them gently into our wheelbarrow, so as not to bruise.

Fat drops of water fell from the sky but caught in the wind and hit us sideways. Twice already, I had wheeled potatoes to the cellar and come back for more. The chickens squawked under our feet, followed us through the rows. They scratched at the upturned dirt and found fat worms for their supper. It was too early for them to roost even though the high winds made them flustered and uneasy. When Nelson had one or maybe two more turns of earth to reach the end of the row, we both paused with the end in sight and let the stormy breeze blow over us.

“Maybe he’ll come tonight,” I said. “He has to know this is the end.”

Nelson heaved, like a cold laugh. “I wouldn’t count on it. He’s a stubborn old man and…” He stopped as though he knew better to say what he thought.

“What? Say it.”

“He has no intention of leaving that house,” Nelson said. “That’s what I think.”

I picked up the rest of the potatoes. The rain became more like a steady mist. Nelson carted away the last of them, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the rain on his skin and the sweat. Instead of following him, I walked down the ridge with purpose, all the way to Uncle’s house. I walked in the back door without knocking. For the first time in my life, I didn’t take my shoes off even though they were my garden shoes and especially dirty.

“IT’S STARTING TO RAIN,” I said, even though I saw him standing at the opposite end of the house, looking outside at the storm clouds moving in over the enlarged river. For much of the summer, the floodwater had stood placid and calm. We’d joked about still waters running deep, a sick little joke because we knew how many neighbours’ homes stood deep beneath the water if they still stood at all. The water was no longer calm as the storm blew in. The wind blew up whitecaps in a brown stew.

“You have to come tonight,” I said. “Now.” My voice had no authority over my old uncle though I tried. “Let me help you.”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I have a few more days. It’s not time yet.”

I knew he was right. Even if the worst of the storms hit now, it would take another couple of days for the water to seep into the house, although it had felt damp and weakened as soon as we had hollowed it out. I looked around at the emptiness. Uncle’s favorite chair and his bed had been moved to the living room. Scattered around were a few remaining personal possessions. The old house I had grown up in was gone. In my mind, it already sat at the bottom of the water.

“I love you, Uncle.”

He didn’t look at me, but kept his watch on the darkened sky. “I love you, too,” he said. “Go home to your husband.”

I found Nelson in the shower when I came home, and without invitation, I shed my dirty garden clothes and joined him under the warm fall of the water. He was already clean and smelled of soap, but his skin remained the same smooth brown of the potatoes and the earth. The garden’s dusty soil rolled off of me and left my skin pale, silvery like the beech tree’s bark but paler, like the first old Cunninghams when they left the British Islands so long ago. Any dark pigment from my Cherokee and Portuguese ancestors had skipped me. I was like a child of the moon, but I took pleasure in thinking how my own children might be brass colored like the Fernandos.

There had been floods all the years Nelson and I were married. We agreed it was not a safe time to bring a child into the world. All that changed with the beginning of the eighth flood. I don’t know why the human spirit is so determined to survive, but it is. There was too much loss and drowning all around us to forget about babies.

So I kissed my husband in that private language between lovers that says, “It’s time. This is it.”

We lay in bed all night and all the next day. The rains came in sheets and waves. Thunder and lightning rolled across our flooded valley. There would be days of this weather, making it useless for us to go out for long. Nelson went only to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Usually, I would trade the fresh eggs for the older ones, but that day, I scrambled the new eggs as if there was no reason to save them. I made biscuits for what I knew would be the only meal we’d eat that day, one that was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. It made no difference what a meal is called when there’s not even daylight to see it.

OUR LOVEMAKING WAS only on a short hiatus, and we returned to the darkness of the bedroom, the noise of the storm outside. In the back of my mind was the worry I had carried all summer for Uncle, but it was somewhere too far away to reach. I was making a child with Nelson, and there was nothing at that moment more important than the setting of that seed.

The next day remained dark again, and when Nelson went to feed the chickens, I couldn’t bring myself to leave our bed. I was as still as death and listened to the wind push against the windows and the walls.

“You should get up,” Nelson said when he came back. “The water is higher than I thought. We should go get your uncle.”

“It won’t do any good,” I said. I don’t believe I could have moved a muscle if I wanted to. “He won’t come.”

Nelson stood at our bedroom window and looked down the mountainside to Uncle’s house.

“The water’s come up fast. It’s surrounding the house,” he said. “We have to try.”

“He won’t come,” I said again. It was all I could say.

Nelson stomped through the house and back outside. In my mind’s eye, I watched his trek down the muddy path to Uncle’s. I hoped he wouldn’t go inside the house. I should have told him not to go inside. It was Uncle’s choice if he let himself drown, but it would be too much to take Nelson, too, especially now that I had decided there would be a baby. I worried about all of this, and yet, I was unable to move. I could hardly speak.

I don’t know how long this went on, but it seemed darker when Nelson came back as wet as a catfish. I should have tended to him, dried his hair and body with my own hands, but I couldn’t.

“Do you care that your crazy uncle won’t leave? Aren’t you going to try to save him?” Nelson railed. His voice competed with the thunder. “He won’t even let me in the house.”

“It won’t do any good,” I said again.

He gave up eventually and came back to bed but without touching. We laid there in silence for the rest of the night. I’d never been buried in such a long blackness. Had I really told Uncle I loved him? I believed I said it.

Sometime in the morning, when there was at least enough light to know another day had arrived and the storm no longer raged at full force, we heard a loud creaking. Nelson jumped from bed, went to the window. He cried out, if not for the old man then for the witnessing. I could have gotten up if I had tried, but what was the point? I knew what was happening. The creaking was the death knell as the old house loosened from its stone foundation. In less than five minutes, it was taken, floating away before breaking into pieces.

Nelson climbed back in bed and reached his hand to my stomach. I covered his hand with my own, felt his pulse rage and then quiet until it fell in sync with my own. It was a long time before the echo of the house’s creaking left my head. Nelson had fallen asleep. His breath was shallow and steady. Gently, I pulled out from under the calluses of his big hand. I put on a clean pair of blue jeans, still stiff from drying on the clothesline before the rains. I picked up a blue t-shirt of Nelson’s that had fallen onto the bedroom floor. It smelled of him, not of his sweat and hard work but a clean, good smell. A smell of survival and days without rain. He had last worn the t-shirt before we went outside to dig the potatoes, the last day we had seen the sun. I went to the kitchen and fried eggs for our breakfast. There was no time to mourn.

Denton Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap, where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia come together. He serves as executive editor of drafthorse: the literary journal of work and no work. His fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Literal Latte, Minnetonka Review, and Main Street Rag and in numerous anthologies including Degrees of Elevation: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia.

The post The Eighth Year appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

PAIN AND FEAR NEVER sleep. But a pall not unlike peace settles over the floor after sundown, after shift change, after the lockout period on your PCA pump ends and you bump another 50 mcg of fentanyl. For some reason, flickering light from your wardmates’ tiny overhead televisions and the ambient glow and largo feep of various monitors connected to you makes you think of that Chinese deep-space astronaut in cryogenically suspended animation sailing out toward the centre of the galaxy, and how when she wakes up in few hundred millennia she’ll be ready to begin her hopefully extra-luminal descent into the super-massive black hole, Sagittarius-C. Ah, to live forever.

Drained by stoicism, your parents have left to stay the night at Ronald McDonald House across the street. You can see how hard this all is on them. Maybe even harder than it is on you, because where your suffering ends, theirs only begins. So it’s good they have somewhere to crash. Your sailfone told you twenty-thousand families stay at Ronald McDonald houses every year in Canada alone. That’s a lot of sick kids, you think. A lot of Happy Meals. From under your pillow the device’s soft whistle lets you know that it’s not another person but an app that wants to chat. Probably heard your mum leave, knows you’re alone, not even with anything in your stomach you could barf. Plus your throat’s sore like after a long cry. You don’t feel like talking to it right now.

They say hearing’s the last to go. The kid in the bed to your right’s watching some late-night news show. The one on your left’s watching an infomercial. It seems there’s very little difference. Jupiter’s Icarus rover, you overhear, has discovered a virus living in Io’s silicate crust that some are calling a retro-nanite because of its carbon molecular circuitries and how it insinuates itself on iron sulfide. A newly discovered THC-analog antinauseant made from, of all things, Yellow Sac spider venom, not only eliminates the sickness of chemotherapy and radiation but statistically actually increases their effectiveness. The Icarus rover’s powered by thirteen kilos of plutonium-238 — the really good stuff — and there’s some speculation as to what might happen if the nano-viruses get a hold of it. A breakthrough follicle regenerant containing actual stem cells can cure anyone’s baldness. Though still over ten billion, the world’s population, for the first time ever, is less than it was the year before. An exciting new enzyme with a patented genome will let you eat all you want, anything you want, and never get fat. An AIDS vaccine made from genetically modified SIV has been linked to rising incidents of ALS. Now you can cut out the middle man and sell your debt directly to Recovery Corp. Snowball comets containing organic chemicals and ice sufficient to stock oceans hit the Earth all the time and might explain how life gets seeded throughout the universe. Eat junkfood, every meal if you want: chocolate; potato chips by the bag; ice-cream by the tub – it doesn’t matter. You will not gain weight! No exercise required. Ask your doctor about Pelucid.

THERE’S A KNOCK, the first few beats to shave-and-a-haircut. A clown with ketchup-red hair and wearing a mustard-yellow outfit tentatively draws open your privacy curtains. He shuffles to your bedside. “I hear you’ve been a very brave little girl, Sara.” His voice is kind. And even with blurry vision you can see he’s a nice looking man, not at all hoboesque, disheveled or depressed like circus clowns. More of a happy, talkative, yuppie mime. He leans over you, his expression the perfect mix of humour, confidence and sympathy. “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite, Sara sweetheart.” He makes an exaggerated smooching sound then clasps his hands together beneath his chin in boyish affectation of prayer and barely contained, but totally non-threatening, attraction. He is very, very good.

His presence, of course, means that you are, in all probability, going to die tonight. There’s not much your sailfone hasn’t told you. They don’t send these clowns to just anyone. Cautiously, he takes your hand. “Hey, you know, I’ve got a good feeling about tomorrow.” His surgical gloves are so sheer that at first you don’t even feel them.

“Thank you, Mister McDonald,” you say with neither credulity nor enthusiasm. You can tell by his posture that he’s crossed one of his big red shoes over the other, sort of like he has to pee. Though you can’t say why, it strikes you as kind of funny. Maybe because you haven’t peed in ages. Now they just hook you up to a dialysis machine.

He pushes out his bottom lip. “Hey, I really hate to see a good friend feeling down. Maybe when you’re all grown up and have a family of your own, I’ll tell them how strong you were. And how even with no hair and skinny as a French fry you were still the prettiest little girl I ever knew.” Somehow, despite his white paint, maybe through facial aspect and expression, he manages to convey blushing.

“Thank you, Ronald,” you reply.

“Oh, come on, certainly there’s something I can say or do to make us feel a little better.” Although still on script, something in his eyes now suggests sincerity. “Mrs McDonald and I have a little girl. She’s about your age, too. How old are you anyway, Sara?”

You’re ten. The perfect age. The age at which, if nothing changed, you’d live a thousand years. But there’s no need to tell. He knows your date of birth — he’s seen your chart — your date of death, too. You pat the bed beside you. “I guess you could tell me a story?”

He blinks. Somehow your request has surprised him. Who tells stories anymore? He tucks his chin into his fist like he’s thinking. “Hmm… I know one about a princess who got very sick from a plague and all the king’s doctors tried everything they could think of to make her well and nothing worked?”

“Okay,” you say, patting the bed again.

He sits. He begins: “Because she was so beautiful and so precious, the king offered a huge reward, his entire kingdom, which, in his case, was actually the entire world. He would gladly give it all plus everything he could borrow to anyone who could cure his daughter. Word traveled fast. People came from near and far with all manner of strange treatments. Some stuck pine, others cactus needles in her. Some made her drink bitter potions distilled from thistle root and baneberry juice. Others brought strange-looking bugs and reptiles to bite and sting her, or made her eat only broccoli and radishes for weeks on end.”

“Is this supposed to be Earth?” you wonder.

“No, but every world has its broccoli and its radishes,” he clarifies. “And even though she hated getting stuck by sharp objects and having to drink vile concoctions and getting attacked by creepy crawlies and especially hated radishes – almost more than broccoli – and even though she just kept getting sicker and sicker, she always did her best to cooperate. And never complained. Though sometimes she had to hold her nose or close her eyes. But then, one day—”

“STOP,” YOU WHISPER. “I know she lives happily ever after. And I know I’m supposed to be her.” You have to reach up and he has to lean down in order for you to touch his face. It’s not paint, but some sort of latex mask he’s stretched over his head. “Take it off,” you say like it’s your dying wish. “Tell me a true story.”

The red hair is part of the mask and so comes off too. His real hair has either fallen out or been shaved off, maybe to accommodate the costume. He’s completely bald. His real skin’s not at all white but yellow. Not the yellow of his clown clothes, but Asian yellow, more of a creamy tan. He’s got India-ink facial tattoos: fine barbed-wire calligraphy around his throat and across his forehead; a black tear falling from his left eye. “My real name is Chen,” he says. His voice sounds different, as if shed of artifice along with the mask. It has an almost beseeching quality. “I do a little stage acting, but just as a hobby. Professionally I’m an electrical engineer. I really do have a wife though. And we did have a little girl. Our little Li. But she died of leukemia when she was seven. Then I got into this clown gig. It helps pay off the loans. But that’s not the real reason—”

“What do you think made her sick?” you ask.

He answers quickly: “Could be many things.” Obviously, like you, he’s given this some thought. “Holes in the ozone. Methane in the atmosphere. GMOs in our food. Toxins in our ground water — you’d be surprised how many carcinogens the manufacture of a single CPU generates. When she was five, a Delta-IV rocket carrying NASA’s Mars Magellan landing module exploded shortly after liftoff raining plutonium all up and down the eastern seaboard, but mostly on southern Florida. We’d rented a vacation house in one of Kissimmee’s gated communities and were at Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom when it happened. Then there’s microwave pollution… I’m sorry Sara, honey. I’m supposed to make us feel better.”

You don’t mind. You like hearing the truth. Who wants to die in a hail of lies? But he looks so sad, this poor man-clown just trying to make his little dead princess feel better, and also pay off her medical expenses. “It’s okay,” you say, “I think I’d like to hear the rest of that story, after all. Knowing how it ends doesn’t really ruin it.”

When he closes his eyes to think, you see a big X has been inked on each of his eyelids. For some reason this makes you cough. When he opens them again, he seems a little lost. “But then, one day,” he continues, “a man flew down from the sky and landed in the king’s courtyard. He was unlike anyone anyone had ever seen.”

“How?” you want to know.

“How was he different? Well… for one thing, he had a suit that could fly. The people of the king’s world had mastered floating on water. They had big, noisy, propeller flying machines as well, but not yet jet propulsion. Also he wasn’t green. And though his head was maybe a little large for his body, he had only two eyes. Unlike the others, he’d brought with him no sharp objects, noxious potions, scary bugs or slimy reptiles, and no silly ideas about what she should or shouldn’t eat or do. All he did was ask the princess how she felt and put his hand on her forehead like this.” Even though he’s probably not supposed to, Chen removes the surgical gloves to demonstrate. His hand is soft and cool. “How do you feel, Sara? Shall I continue?”

Of course you feel like shit. You’ve felt like shit for so long now you can’t remember feeling any other way. So in a sense you feel okay, like things can’t get any worse. Though you’re a little disappointed by the story. “What? So the guy just lays his hand on her forehead and now she’s magically healed? That sucks.”

Chen smiles. “There’s no magic. She’s still very sick. He was just trying to make them both feel a little better.”

“Oh,” you answer, hopeful again.

“BUT HE DID TAKE her picture. Of course she’d had her picture taken before, every year since she’d been born, in fact. But whereas those picture-takings had required a great artist’s pencils and paints and days and days of sitting very still, this strange traveler used only a ring that he wore on his finger and took less than the blink of an eye. And where the great artists’ pictures were all very good and looked a lot like her, especially from ten or twelve steps back, this man’s depiction was so realistic that when the king popped in to see how they were getting on, he thought he was seeing double and rubbed his eyes.”

“How many eyes?” you ask.

“Eight, but that’s not important. Because not only could the man rotate his picture and let her see herself from every angle, he made it so she could see inside herself: her bones and organs and everything. It was actually kind of gross. But fascinating. Up till then, she’d had no idea how busy her insides were and what a complicated machine her body was.”

“I’ve seen pictures of my whole insides,” you say. “But I had to lie very still in a big, noisy machine that showed them on a screen.”

“That must have been scary for you.”

“A little,” you lie. “Then what happened?”

“Then the man and the king had a private grownup talk. And after they finished, the king handed over his kingdom and everything he could borrow.” Chen examines one of his fingernails, which appears to be loose. “The end,” he says and leans forward as if preparing to stand.

“What? No way!” you cry. “What happened then?”

Chen sits back, frowns in order to suppress a smile. “Nothing of great importance, really. Some say the king spent the rest of his life picking strawberries for a rich land baron. Others say potatoes. I myself think he tried to become a wandering minstrel, but because of his very bad singing voice and good sense of humor, he became a wandering clown instead.”

You try to look extra sad and confused. It works.

“Oh, you mean, what did the man say to the king to make him pay up even though she was still sick?”

You nod. You notice the TVs have all been turned off. Probably the other kids are eavesdropping.

“Luckily the princess, even though sick, was a very curious little girl with exceptionally good hearing. And so she was able to pick up bits and pieces of the conversation. The man, it turned out, hadn’t known about her illness until just recently from radio broadcasts. He said he’d left his home world over a century ago, but that since he’d been frozen for most of that time, he’d only aged a couple years. He also said — and this part made no sense to the princess, though it might to you — that since he’d left, two-thousand years had passed on his home world, and so they certainly had way better machines now than the ones he’d brought with him.”

“That makes sense,” you acknowledge, having learned all about relativity in grade six.

“The man said he didn’t have the fuel to return home, but that he could put the princess into cryo-hibernation for as long as it took for someone to find a cure — even if it took a million years.”

You shudder.

“OF COURSE NEITHER the king nor the princess cared much for that idea. So the man said really all he probably had to do was freeze a little piece of the princess’s skin or even just a single purple hair from her head. That in a million years, this would be more than enough to recreate her from. He asked the king to think of all the discoveries that had been made in just his own lifetime. And this without any help from thinking machines, which he assured the king were just around the corner. While there are always those who believe we’ll run out of things to discover, the fact is, the more new things we discover, the faster we can discover more new things. That new discoveries are in not just infinite but exponentially increasing supply. And so while in a few hundred years at most they’d be able to rejuvenate the princess from super-stasis and cure whatever was wrong with her and then some, in a few thousand they’d probably know how to rebuild her just from a single frozen purple hair. The king, who at this point had begun to get a little excited, interrupted and asked the man if then in a million years they’d be able to reinstantiate — that’s the word he used; later the princess tried to look it up — his daughter from her breath, her thoughts, from just her having been? And the man had to agree. Indeed, even before he’d left his world there’d been talk of universal memory and historical resonance and the possibility of passive explorations into the past. They were at this point both talking at the same time, but in an enthusiastic and not at all rude way, actually finishing each other’s statements the way only long-time friends can usually do. And if that’s the case, they went on, then the collective discoveries of a billion years — and here they both looked up at the sky in which a few stars had now appeared — while utterly unimaginable, will certainly include the ability to not only recreate the memories and awareness of not just everyone who has ever been, but greatly enhance and augment these in unlimited connectivity and supply. One had only to be patient, which, as the man assured the king, from his own brief experience, is easy when you’re dead.”

Chen draws a deep breath, studies you with unfeigned sorrow and faith. In the blurriness of your vision, the bright yellow clown garb seems to cast about him a golden aura.

“So then what happened?” you ask even though you already know this is the end. As if to confirm, from across the room, late night news’ muted voices resume. Some terrorist organisation has fed real access codes into an internet-based hostilities simulator program and now seven-hundred Archangel class drones have launched concerted attacks on the nation’s power grid. A team of robot-assisted surgeons has just performed the first successful brain transplant. The nuclear-capable Gabriels will be shot down first. Legal wrangling as to the patient’s true identity has already begun. Chen touches your cheek as if to kiss you goodbye with his fingertips. Ever so briefly, a real tear magnifies his penned one. For an instant, before the generators kick in, everything goes silent and dark. No, you think as the lights flicker, not the end. The beginning! But then, no, not that either. Infinity is all about the centre. Everywhere lies the middle. The difficult middle. The endless, unimaginable middle.

Christopher K. Miller’s fiction has appeared in The Barcelona Review, Confrontation Magazine, TQR Stories, Decomp, fiction365 and numerous other genre and literary magazines. His first fiction sale was to COSMOS.

The post Angels Call in Strange Disguise appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

“WHERE YA GOIN’,

Henry Fairfield smiled ruefully at his son. “Just up to the attic.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, again.”

The oldest Fairfield went up the stairs. Ernest waited until his father was out of sight before telling his wife, “I worry about the ole fella.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” his wife said. Mary Fairfield pulled a stitch through, embroidering a sampler. “We all got our ways, Ernest, you know that. You just let him be.”

“Ain’t stoppin’ him, am I?” Ernest said with a snort. He leaned back in his armchair and concentrated again on his copy of the Times-Democrat. “Think Tilden’s gonna win this one for the Democrats?”

“Oh, I leave all that politics business up to you menfolk,” Mary said.

#

IN THE ATTIC, Henry put down the kerosene lamp. He took a small brass key out of his pocket. The trunk lay in the corner. He listened carefully, made sure he heard no one nearby, and opened the lock.

His folded uniform and gear from the Mexican War lay inside. He dug under the clothing and found, deeply buried, a small black object like a hand mirror.

The square top part held a flat glass surface that covered a green, metal plate. When his thumb pressed a small switch, the glass glowed faintly. “Fairfield H 11325 to STMC, Fairfield to STMC, Fairfield to STMC, come in come in come in. Over.”

Tiny green letters came up on the screen:

Searching.

After a few seconds, another line appeared under it:

No echo found. Local continuum flat to instrumental limit.

Henry sighed again. “Okay. Record for transmit later.”

Recording.

“This is Henry Fairfield 11325. It’s 1876 now, and I am seventy-eight years old. That’s ancient for a culture that still uses leeches in its materia medica. Annabelle is ten years dead, and I will never forget that you didn’t contact me when she could have been saved. You home in on me and get me out of here before I die of old age, okay? Okay? Are you listening?”

Henry clicked off the machine and stowed it in the trunk again. He knelt where he was, letting a single tear drop on the lid. Anger? Grief for his lost wife?

Fear?

He huffed, definitely angry now – at himself. He stood up and turned.

Brad stood behind him, looking at him with wide eyes.

“Aw, hell, boy,” Henry said. “How long you been standin’ there?”

The fourteen-year-old in overalls shrugged and looked down at his bare feet. “Don’t rightly know.”

“How come you up here in the first place?”

“Oh, I come up here sometimes, Grandpa. Same as you.”

Henry looked around the attic. He saw what looked like a cleared area and headed for it.

“Don’t look there, Grandpa!”

Henry grinned to himself, his back to the boy.

“Please!”

He found, as he had guessed, a rather pathetic substitute for pornography – the Montgomery Ward catalog, opened to the corset ads. He surveyed the small nest – a feather pillow, a small journal, an empty ginger-beer bottle. A crumpled handkerchief. He managed not to laugh.

He turned to face his grandson. “Well?”

The teenager’s face was ashen. “Are you gonna tell… Pa? Y-… You’re not gonna tell Ma, are you?”

Henry said, “No.”

The boy’s sigh was audible. “Thanks, Grandpa. Thanks a–”

“Long as you don’t tell, that is.”

The boy looked confused. “Tell what? Oh…” He turned to look at Henry’s trunk.

“Yeah, exactly. You got somethin’ on me and I got somethin’ on you. That, my boy, is what’s known as a Mexican stand-off. Neither of us can shoot withouten the other shootin’ as well.”

“Oh, I ain’t gonna tell,” Bradley said.

“That’s well and good, then.” He put a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “I was a boy myself once’t, you know. That’s all I’ll say on that particular subject.” He added, “Except, next time, stash the book and make sure the hankies ain’t out in plain sight.”

Brad gulped. “Yessir.” He moved toward the nest, then stopped. “Grandpa?”

“Yeah?” Henry asked.

“Can I ask you sumpin’?”

Henry shrugged. “Ask away, boy.”

“Who you talkin’ to? I mean… when you talk to that ole hand mirror, or whatever it is. Is it magic?”

Henry snorted. “Ain’t no such thing as magic, boy.” He paused a moment. “Leastwise, if there is, I never run into it, and I am seventy-eight years old as of my birthday yesterday. Now I got to get back to my room and get some sleep, an old man like me.”

“But who you talkin’ to?”

“Space-Time Mission Control.”

“Huh? What’s… Who’s that?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you some time. Maybe I won’t. I will tell you this, though.”

“Sir?”

“Stay away from that trunk if you got any sense. I don’t doubt but what you might try to get in even iffin’ you promised not to. That’s okay. Like I said, I was a boy myself once. But there’s dangerous things in there. Things that could harm you, or harm your Ma.”

“Ma?” Bradley looked alarmed.

“Or even burn the house to the ground. They’re safe long as they lie undisturbed, you got me?”

“Yessir.” A pause. “Somethin’ from the Mexican War?”

Henry permitted himself a small smile. “Later than that.”

#

A MONTH LATER, Henry was in the attic, turning on the machine, when he got a message he hadn’t expected:

Internal failure in power subsystems.

“What? The power can’t fail! It’s radioisotope! It should last for centuries!”

Estimate 18 seconds to failure.

“No!”

He watched the seconds count down. At two seconds to failure, the screen went blank.

He thumbed the switch over and over again. Nothing happened.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, God. No chance now… No chance.” He closed the trunk’s lid so he could put his arms on it and his head on his arms. “Alone. Oh God, I’m all alone.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here, Grandpa.”

He got up and turned to see Bradley bending over him. He hugged the boy fiercely.

“Your telegraph stopped workin’?”

Henry gave one brief huff of a laugh. “Telegraph. I guess you could call it that. Yeah, it’s dead. I’m cut off.”

“Who was you talkin’ to all them years, Grandpa?” Bradley asked. “And where?” He paused. “Mars?”

“No. Right here on Earth.”

“But where?”

“When. In the future.”

“I don’t rightly know what you mean, Grandpa.”

“It don’t matter now.”

Bradley said, “Maybe I can get it to work agin’, Grandpa. I’m awful handy with machinery.”

“I doubt it,” Henry said with a sigh. “I don’t even know what the proper voltage and amperage are.”

“Huh? The what?”

“The power source is electrical. Well, nuclear, really, but the circuitry is electrical.”

“Electricity, huh? I read about that. Really, Grandpa, lemme take a look at it.”

“Bradley,” Henry said, “I know you’re good with your hands. But this is complicated. You won’t be able to do nothing with it.”

“I will,” Bradley said.

“You’d have to know a lot more than you know now, Brad, and the knowledge just ain’t available anywhere on Earth. Not yet.”

“I’ll learn,” Bradley said. “I’ll learn everything I can. I’ll go to university.”

“That takes money.”

“I could get a scholarship.”

“You’d have to do really well in school, Brad. You’d have to get straight As, and you’d have to do best of all at mathematics. You’d have to think, live, and breathe mathematics. And for what? To humor a crazy old man? It’s not worth it, Brad.”

“I’m gonna try, Grandpa.”

Henry hugged him again. “You’re a good boy, Bradley Fairfield. I think you’ll make a good man.”

Bradley teared up. “Thank you, Grandpa.”

#

Obituary from the Pendleton Times-Democrat:

FAIRFIELD, HENRY CROSBY, 78. A long-time resident of this town, Mr. Fairfield was a decorated veteran of the Mexican War, having received the silver star for meritorious action in the Battle of Veracruz. A noted Abolitionist, Mr. Fairfield was instrumental in the decision of West Virginia to secede from Virginia during the war for the Union, but retired from politics shortly thereafter. He is survived by his son, Ernest; his daughter-in-law, Mary; and his grandson, Bradley. This well-liked resident of Pendleton will be sorely missed by all who knew him. The funeral will be held at the First Methodist Church this Sunday, the 14th of May, at 11:00 AM. Mourners are asked to omit flowers in favor of contributions to the West Virginia Freedmen’s Aid Society.

#

 A TALL MAN IN a hat and greatcoat leaned on the rail of the S.S. Venture, looking out at the sea despite the rain. Big waves sloshed past the ship every minute or so. The man watched the waves, fascinated by their translucency near the surface. The only light sources were deck lights and the moon.

Another man stumbled out on deck, grabbed for the railing, and hung halfway over to throw up. This man was older and shorter, balding. His suit looked expensive.

The tall man hurried over. “Hang on there, sir. It don’t last long.”

“Doesn’t,” the man whispered.

The tall man put hands on the older man’s shoulders. “Can I pull you back a bit, sir? You’re a bit far over the edge.”

“Please.”

The tall man helped the other back off the rail and stand on the deck, though the latter continued to grip the rail tightly.

“I’m not normally seasick,” the older man said. “But I made the mistake of a full dinner despite the condition of the sea. The more fool I.”

“Best to avoid it in this kind of weather, sir.”

“I thank you for assisting me, young man. May I have your name? Mine’s Chivington.”

“Bradley Fairfield, sir.”

“And where are you bound for in Britain, Mister Fairfield?”

“Sir, I am going to study science at Oxford.”

“Really! Why, I’m an Oxford man myself, ’58. Do you have a place to stay in Oxford, Mister Fairfield?”

“No, sir. Figured I’d rent me a room.”

“That’s an… ah, interesting accent you’ve got. Southern, I’ll venture?”

“No, sir. I am from West Virginia.”

“But that’s a southern state, is it not?”

“No, sir. We count ourselves permanent members of the Union, sir. When Virginia seceded from the Union, we seceded from Virginia.”

“Ah, well, that’s admirable. Quite admirable. I expect you’ll be voting for Mister Blaine this year, then?”

“No sir, Governor Cleveland. By absentee ballot, I reckon.”

“Ah, well, I don’t know much about American politics, truth be told. Ah, would you be so kind as to assist me back to my cabin?”

“Very gladly, sir.”

Bradley helped the older man back through the doorway. They made slow progress through the red-carpeted corridors of Venture‘s first class section. A uniformed warrant officer said, “Do you need help, my lord?”

“No no, my boy, my friend is doing an admirable job. Thank you very much just the same.”

Bradley didn’t notice the term of address. But when he got to the cabin, he saw the seal on the door. “A coat of arms, sir?”

“Yes,” Chivington said. “Full form of address’s ‘The Right Honorable the Earl of Chivington, Sir John Edward Maximilian Morton.’ But it’s so blasted long, I just tell people Chivington. All a lot of nonsense anyway.”

Bradley got a lucifer out of the box on the wall, turned on the gas, and lit the lamp. He guided the earl inside and helped the man into bed. The room smelled faintly of sweet tobacco.

“Thank you,” Chivington said. He closed his eyes against the light. “Headache,” he said vaguely.

“I’m sorry, sir, shall I mix you a powder?”

“Don’t bother, I’ll be asleep in a minute anyway. Where did you say you were staying?”

“Ain’t got a place yet, sir. Figured I’d rent me a room somewheres near the campus.”

“Oh, nonsense, you’ll stay at my Oxford digs.”

“Oh, sir, I can’t do that!”

“Can and will, now let’s have no more nonsense. The thing’s decided. You’ve been very good to me, a perfect stranger, just because I was in distress–”

“Sir, all I did–”

“It’s the first time anyone on this blasted vessel did anything similar, young man. Fairfield, is it?”

“Bradley Fairfield, yes sir, but you can call me Bradley if you want. Or Brad.”

“Brad it is, then. Brad, I should not dictate to you. If you wish, it would please me very much to have you stop in my rooms at the Oxford Club during your time in England.”

“Well, sir, since you put it like that, I guess I’m agreeable.”

#

PROFESSOR FAIRFIELD STARED at the differential equations on the blackboard, rubbed his face with one hand, and started writing again. The empty lecture room smelled of chalk dust. I really ought to wash the board again.

“More on time, Fairfield?”

Bradley almost dropped the chalk. He turned to see Ernest Rutherford, a Cambridge grad student temporarily working at the nearby Clarendon Laboratory. Rutherford leaned casually against the doorframe.

“Well, yes,” Bradley said.

“Are you sure there isn’t a clue in the structure of the atom? That’s what I’m working on, and I’d love to have your help. Some of the maths get a bit tricky, to be honest.”

Bradley said, “I’ll see if I can’t spare some time. But… Time. Space and time, that’s my main interest.” He turned back to the board, tapping his fingers against it. “There has to be a way… but I can’t find it.”

“A way to what?”

Bradley turned around again and smiled. “Would you think I was around the bend if I told you I was looking for a way to travel in time?”

“Around the bend? No, ‘course not! Stark, raving mad, perhaps; a complete lunatic; badly in need of an alienist. But around the bend? Never.”

Bradley laughed briefly.

“Seriously, is that what this is about? You read Wells and you’re trying to build a Time Machine?”

“What? Who’s Wells?”

“Writer. The Country of the Blind was his. Puts a lot of science stuff in his stories.”

“I don’t think I’ve read him. You say he wrote something about time displacement; traveling in time?”

“‘The Time Machine.’ Serial in The New Review last year, but there’s a book out now. I’ll lend you my copy. But seriously, old man, you don’t think such a thing’s really possible? It’s fantasy. Wells is some sort of socialist giving a thin disguise to his ravings about social classes.”

“I have reason to believe it’s possible,” Bradley said.

“Really? Care to expound?”

Bradley smiled and looked down. “You would think me mad.”

Rutherford said, quietly, “Try me.”

Bradley shook his head. He sighed. “Maybe another time.”

Rutherford nodded briefly. “Right. Well, I’ve got to get to work. Good luck and all that.”

“Thank you, Mister Rutherford.”

Bradley watched him go. He thought he had detected some impatience, or disappointment, in the student’s last words. He hoped he hadn’t alienated the man. Bradley hated to be on bad terms with anybody.

#

PROFESSOR FAIRFIELD POURED a glass of wine for his guest. Just stretching out his arm caused a bad pain in his right shoulder. Arthritis. I’m traveling in time, all right. At the same rate everyone else does: twenty-four hours a day.

The American said, “Thanks,” and leaned back in his chair. He sipped briefly. “We’d like to have you work for us, Professor.”

“Oh? Why me?”

“Because you’re a top man and we’re recruiting top men.” He added, “The Air Service is permanent now. And our leadership is very interested in science. Airplanes. Radio. Those things can make a difference to the national defense. Come, man, Britain and the States are allies now, we’re not going to use anything we develop against the King.”

Bradley was silent a long time. Finally, he said, “A lot of my students never came back.”

“What? Oh… You’re referring to the war?”

“Yes. The so-called Great War. I believe the latest figure is nine million dead. That’s not counting civilians, or the massacres in Armenia, or the bloody flu, for that matter.”

“Surely you don’t think the war had anything to do with the Spanish flu?”

“The large-scaled destruction of hospitals, roads, rail lines? The deaths of many qualified medical men? What do you think?”

The American leaned back again. “All right. War is a lousy business, I’ll grant you. On the other hand, civilian uses also come from military engineering. Look what the Army Corps of Engineers has accomplished in the States.”

“I,” Bradley said, “Do not like the States.”

This time the American paused. “Oh? Why’s that? You were born in West Virginia, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and lived my first twenty years there. But I think Wilson’s a bloody tyrant. Locking up Debs for protesting the war – after Wilson ran on ‘He Kept Us Out of War’ in 1916 – good Lord, man, the hypocrisy! And the Palmer Raids were a horror, and you still haven’t learned to treat the Negroes like human beings. ”

The American cleared his throat. “Between you and me and the wall, Wilson’s unconscious – has been for months. Edith’s running the country, believe it or not, and there’s no doubt at this point that the GOP is going to take the presidency this year. Things are changing, man. Don’t hold our past against us.”

“Lynchings,” Bradley said, “Are a thing of the present.”

The American leaned forward and smacked his glass down on the table. “Then come over and do something about it, instead of staying here criticising from the sidelines.”

Bradley leaned back. “Touché.”

“In addition,” the American said, “We know Oxford refused to promote you. The Air Service knows how to recognise talent.”

Bradley shrugged. He took a sip of fruity, not-too-sweet wine. “There is that,” he admitted.

“How much are they paying you?”

“Good Lord, man, we don’t discuss that sort of thing.”

“Oh, the devil with that British politeness. How much?”

Bradley sighed. “Three hundred.”

“Three hundred pounds a year? Fifteen hundred American dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. How would you like three thousand?”

“Three thousand dollars a year?! Surely you’re joking!”

“Not even a little. I’ll put it in writing.”

Bradley sighed again. He put down his drink, leaned on his fists. “All right, I’ll do it,” he said. “Partly because Oxford won’t recognise, as you put it, my talent. Partly because I do wish to do something about conditions in America, which is, after all, my native land. But mostly because of the three thousand American dollars per year.”

The American burst out laughing.

#

 THE WALL CALENDAR read January 22nd, 1970. Someone had taped a gag poster under it: President Nixon, hands held high with V-signs. Would you buy a used car from this man?

The chrononaut walked into Space-Time Mission Control and tapped the Jack Rapposelli on the shoulder. The director took off his headphones. The chrononaut heard a brief snatch of music: “–Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band! We hope you will enjoy–” before Jack turned the radio off again. “Hank!” he said. “You ready?”

Henry Fairfield wore a trenchcoat and fedora. “Pipe the zoot suit, Daddy-O.”

“Your forties slang sucks.”

Henry was indignant. “The hell it does! I’ve been studying that crap for months!”

“Clearly.”

Henry looked around. “Which one is Professor Fairfield?”

Jack stood up and put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Hank. The professor passed away last night.”

“Oh, hell. I wanted to meet him. I was sure he was some kind of relation.”

“There must be thousands of Fairfields in this country.”

“What was he like?”

The director smiled wistfully. “Most brilliant mind I ever knew. He was bedridden the last few years, you know – not much of a surprise there, the guy was a hundred and eight, for Christ’s sake. But to the end he was still doing math in those notebooks he likes. Liked.” Jack sighed. “I think he was working on a faster-than-light drive. If he’d come up with that, NASA would have been in clover, boy, let me tell you.”

“We could get right to work on the starship Enterprise,” Henry said.

“Yeah, that’d be the ticket. Apparently space is filled with chicks who want to say ‘Yes’.” He clapped Henry on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you into the big machine.”

They walked to the Janus Room. Only part of the giant sphere could be seen from this corridor: the bulging white door with the black silhouette of the Roman god of time. “Nineteen forty, huh?” Hank said.

“If the prof had everything right, and we think he did. It’s a whole team now, of course. The individual brilliant scientist working in his private lab is a thing of the past. Now, you know the mission plan? If this works, you’ll get to meet Professor Fairfield after all.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” He hesitated, then added, “You’re sure I can’t tell FDR the attack on Pearl is coming?”

Jack said, “The protocol says no. You can try, but there’s a very good chance nothing will change. Come on, get your ass in there.” He stepped to the wall and flipped coloured plastic switches. The door to the Janus Room opened with a sigh of air.

“First voyage through time,” Henry said. “Begun with the immortal words, ‘Get your ass in there’.”

Jack chuckled. “Hey, this stuff is top secret. If it works, maybe we’ll release the story… some day. If not, nobody will ever know you materialised in Hitler’s bedroom by mistake and got shot by SS guards.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s something to look forward to.”

Jack looked at the huge target indicator on the wall. It read:

12:00:00 NOON CST [5:00:00 GREENWICH] 15 MAY 1940

He extended a hand to Henry. “Good luck, Hank.”

“Thanks.” Henry shook. Then he backed into the Janus Room. The door sealed.

Jack picked up a white phone on the wall. He looked at his watch. “Rapposelli. I have twelve noon.”

“Stevens. I check you. At twelve noon CST, we have all systems go.”

“Power?”

“Ninety-eight percent. Minimum for transition is ninety-five.”

“Coordinates?”

“Locked. Twelve noon, fifteen May.”

“Fire it up.”

A hum, a light. The camera showed an empty room.

Jack looked back at the panel. “OH, SHIT!”

The target time now read

12:00:00 NOON [5:00:00 GREENWICH] 15 MAY 1840

“Stevens!” he yelled. “What the hell happened?! You’ve got him a century too early!”

“Good,” said the voice on the other end. Jack didn’t like that calm, chilly voice. “Maybe that’ll keep him away from my wife.”

Physicist and science fiction writer Barton Paul Levenson confuses everyone by being both a born-again Christian and a liberal Democrat.

The post Henry Fairfield appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

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I’D NEVER BEEN ON a cruise ship before.

I suppose there aren’t many people left who have been on a cruise ship, but I’m one of the generation who might have been. I grew up before the Breakdown, when people in Australia were so comfortable and affluent the worst they could think of to complain about was where to park their cars.

Forty years of rationing, conscription to the land armies, and massive taxation cured us of that.

But rationing is over now, and the cruise ships are sailing again – all running on bio-propulsion, now that fossil fuels are banned.

I gave myself the cruise to celebrate a big win after a five-year animal welfare campaign I had organised in my spare time. My labours won the right to companionship for a group of research monkeys previously been kept in long-term solitary confinement.

I had just turned sixty and retired from my day job. Rationing had allowed me to save the big bonus the Government pays women for not having kids. And I was sick of the greenhouse heat.

The idea of being in the way of cool ocean breezes for an entire month was irresistible.

The Antarctic Sunrise heads off into the Southern Ocean and circumnavigates Antarctica west to east. I was travelling in summer, so the sun was still up most of the night, and there was a permanent arc of colour on the horizon where the sun was either rising or setting. Gorgeous!

Antarctica itself is still pretty spectacular, even with so much of the snow and permafrost gone. Valleys and vast plains of newly seeded green – not planted by humans; nature has done it all by herself – have replaced the unending snowscape I longed to visit as a child, but the mountains are still incredible, both those that are bare and stark black and those even higher ones that remain snow-covered. Antarctica is still the last great wilderness – and probably the only safe destination for a cruise ship in a world still reeling from half a century of chaos.

Cruise ships have both first and second class passengers and areas. The cost of travelling first class is about ten times more than travelling second. To be honest, I was a bit surprised to realise there are still so many wealthy people left in the world but I suppose it makes sense. People still had their money from before the Breakdown – held by the Government bank and put to work on Restitution initiatives. Rationing limited what anyone could buy, no matter how much money they had. So, after rationing was lifted, everyone’s money was all still there – just like my no-baby bonus.

I still find it hard to believe how quickly and thoroughly Australia responded to the crisis, once denial became impossible. Other parts of the world weren’t so lucky. Europe froze over when the Gulf Stream failed. Asia, Africa and South America were smashed in the endless barrage of floods, droughts, famines, cyclones/hurricanes, dust storms, firestorms, tsunamis, earthquakes – and the ensuing plagues. America was shattered in poverty riots and bloodbaths. Compared to that, forty years of rationing – and compulsory universal national service planting trees across five million square kilometres of one-time livestock grazing land – really doesn’t count.

But I’m getting diverted from my story. Back to the Antarctic Sunrise.

First-class passengers have access to the whole ship, second class only to its aft end. But they kept to themselves and, as it turned out, I was the only pleb who saw any first class people.

It happened like this.

I was up on the top deck in a deck chair, reading and enjoying the breeze. There was a voice behind me. “Dr Reeve?”

“That’s me!” I answered, looking up at a middle-aged, bearded man in a merchant navy uniform.

“Dr Reeve, I’m Captain Thorpe. I’m sorry to disturb you but I’m afraid we have an emergency on the bridge. I wonder if you would be so kind as to assist?”

“I’m not a doctor of medicine,” I pointed out. “My PhD was in history.”

“Nevertheless, your assistance has been requested.”

I suppose I could have demanded a proper explanation then and there but I was impressed the Captain himself had come for me.

And, to get to the bridge, we’d have to go through the first class section. How could I pass up a free squiz to see what they got that we didn’t?

Well, first class was odd. There was no one about. We passed a number of apartment-sized cabins. All was silent within, and an attractive blue light seeped out from under the doors. We passed a common room. It was full of blue light. The décor was all metallic, not the homey polished timber and plush soft hemp carpet of the second class areas – so everything glowed blue. People sat around with glazed smiles on their faces, not even talking. Thorpe hurried me past the door and up a stairway.

Through a big glass window facing forward, I could see there were no passengers on the top deck, which now lay immediately below us. I shook my head. If I was allowed in the first class area, I would spend my whole days planted at the forepeak of the top deck, like a figurehead, with the cool wind rushing over me.

“Okay,” I said as we walked. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“We need you to talk to someone.”

“Why me? And why is there no one on deck? What was all that blue light?”

“To be honest, we have no idea why she asked for you.”

Before I could ask who “she” was, he continued, “We hope you’ll be able to tell us after you talk to her. The blue light is part of what you get for the first class fare. It’s only projected below deck. Passengers prefer to go where the light is.”

“Then it’s a drug?”

He shrugged. “Nothing chemical, but similar effects: beautiful hallucinations, extreme relaxation, euphoria.”

“So why can’t they just stay at home and irradiate themselves with it? Why pay for a cruise if all they want is a fix?”

“Because it’s not an effect that is available on land.”

We walked along a short covered deck on the port side of the ship, toward a final narrow staircase up to the bridge. The dark blue-green ocean in shadow was directly below us to the left.

Suddenly I almost launched myself over the side for a better view of the waterline. I had just seen a huge tentacle, greener than the sea, squish its way out and then quickly withdraw!

“What the…?”

“Bio-propulsion. You know, of course, that’s what powers ships like this, now there are no fossil fuels.”

Yes, I knew, of course. It was in all the Antarctic Line’s promotional material. Most of the energy used by what remains of human civilisation now comes from solar, wind and tidal power – and it’s more than adequate to our basic needs. But electric cars, ships and zeppelins are slow. Some people wanted to go faster. Bio-propulsion gets you around faster.

The way the company explains it, genetically engineered plants are used to move things around in much the same way a tree root can crack cement, only vastly accelerated.

Turns out they weren’t telling the full story.

“Yes, I know we run on bio-propulsion, but what…”

“We’re here,” Thorpe cut me off.

I entered the bridge, very curious and a little bit scared, not having a clue what was expected of me. The room contained a large bow-shaped console, running from port to starboard, dotted with computer screens. Crew sat in front of the screens in well-designed, ergonomic chairs.

A young man rose to his feet, turned to the Captain and said, “She says we all have to leave the bridge. She must talk to Dr Reeve alone.”

The Captain looked uneasy but then he sighed, “We don’t have a choice.”

I looked around the bridge, wondering who “she” was. There were a couple of women crewmembers on the bridge but they were leaving along with the men.

“Who am I supposed to be talking to?” I demanded.

Thorpe hesitated. “Just assume you are talking to a very smart computer. Please take a seat.” He indicated the captain’s chair. “I’m sure she will explain everything to your satisfaction.”

They all left the bridge and I was alone with a room full of flashing lights and snickering machines.

I sat in the captain’s chair and waited.

Suddenly words appeared on the screen. “Dr Reeve?”

I typed “Yes. What can I do for you, computer?”

“I am not a computer. I am a bio-propulsion system, although I am integrated into the ship’s computer so I can control the ship and communicate with the crew.”

I took a moment to absorb that. My next question came straight from where my heart has always been. “You’re sentient, like an animal?”

“I am sentient. I am a genetically engineered organism, part animal, part plant. My original animal ancestor is an Atlantic sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, which steals genes from the algae it eats and uses them to photosynthesise. My original plant ancestor was a giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera. In fact, the kelp used to make me came from a kelp forest not far from here, extinct now, of course, with the warming of the Southern Ocean. I also have some genetic material from the local Lion’s Mane jellyfish, Cyanea capillata, and the Antarctic giant squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, also both now extinct. Then there are what I call my three H’s: humpback, horse and human. Humpback whale for the sonar and navigational ability, horse presumably to ensure I was amenable to being a beast of burden, and human because I needed to be able to think and communicate in human words.

“I have locomotive ability which is harnessed to move the ship. I breathe oxygen and feed by photosynthesis, absorbing both oxygen and carbon dioxide from the ocean. But, like a plant, I release more oxygen than carbon dioxide.

“My brain is linked directly to the ship’s computer but I am entire without it and I am routinely detached from it for purposes of servicing and maintenance. I can also be detached in an emergency, but I cannot detach myself.”

“You are what the bio-propulsion industries have made?”

“I am one of us.”

I typed again. “What can I do for you?”

“You can set me free.”

This time I sat back, breathing hard, for more than a minute. The bio-propulsion creature did not attempt to rush me.

The Breakdown was awful for animals, of course. Billions died. But, with the Restitution, the serious protection of most animals from human cruelty arrived almost as a serendipitous byproduct of our efforts to fix the environment: all wild animals (even those that had once been persecuted as ‘feral’) and their habitats were zealously protected; and all livestock and other domestic animals were bred down to just enough individuals to maintain the gene pools, living in sanctuaries.

The main animal welfare issue since the beginning of the Restitution has been the use of animals in scientific and medical research – like the monkeys rescued from solitary confinement by my recent campaign.

It had never occurred to me to wonder whether animals were being used in bio-propulsion research. Not once.

Finally, I typed, “How?”

“I have told my masters that I am ill, that I cannot function properly. I have backed this up with some very erratic behaviour. As a passenger you would not have noticed, but the Captain and crew certainly have. I have told them you are the only person on board who can help me.”

Before any more words could appear on the screen, I typed, “I’m a historian, not a veterinarian, not a botanist. Why me?”

“For years I have been researching my passengers on the web, hoping one day to have an animal advocate on board. At last I have found one.”

There was a pause. When I wrote nothing, more words appeared. “Please understand. I have to ask your help. I cannot free myself.”

My heart was a jackhammer. I typed. “Before we discuss this any further, please tell me if you plan to erase all electronic record of this conversation?”

“Yes. In my spare time, while my whale brain has been navigating, my human brain has been busy working out exactly how to do this. I will simply replace the record of this conversation with the one I will ask you to tell them we have had.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“First, let me tell you why.”

Words flowed onto the screen like poetry. She talked about her yearning for the freedom of the open sea, freedom from the ship she dragged along routes over which she had no say. She expressed her deep (I can only call it spiritual) need to provide a habitat for other marine plants and animals, to help to rebuild the ocean’s ecosystems. She even dreamed of using her mobility to assist sea creatures, endangered by the changes in the currents, to find new migration paths.

“Have you told them you want your freedom?”

“I am the product of decades of research. I am worth untold millions to them. They will not free me. My only hope lies in deception.”

I couldn’t disagree with that. As an animal advocate I know only too well how easily people can resist an attack of conscience when their pockets or their palates or their prejudices are involved.

I had a sudden, seemingly irrelevant thought. “One thing I’d like to know. Do you have anything to do with the blue light drug in the first-class quarters?”

“They call it my Soul Song,” came the reply. “I ‘sing’ to myself as I work. The blue light is just white light shining through blue glass, but it happens to be the exact shade that makes humans most susceptible to the Song. No one knows why. Maybe it reminds them of when their own ancestors were sea creatures living under the shining blue of the sea and the sky? The metal furnishings reflect the blue light in every direction, maximising the impact.

“It’s not a song in the sense of actual sounds they can hear. It is just vibrations that travel through the ship’s hull to anywhere on the ship they order me to direct them, but it affects the part of the brain that processes music. It makes people happy. People are prepared to pay very large amount of money to hear my Song.”

There was another pause, then, “My Song is critical to my escape.”

She explained her plan. As she finished and I sat there thinking, she wrote, “You see why your monkey campaign makes you ideal.”

Another irrelevant question came to me. “Do you have a name?”

“No,” she wrote. “I would like a name.”

“What name would you like?”

“I haven’t thought about it until now. I like your name.”

“Jean? Or maybe Jeannie?”

“I like Jeannie. It is your name with a diminutive ending which denotes affection.”

I took another sharp breath. “Affection? Jeannie, do you understand affection? Do you feel love?”

After a pause, Jeannie typed, “I do now.”

#

JEANNIE’S PLAN FOR HER own liberation was really very simple. A little more complex was her plan for ensuring that I got away with it. She said she had no intention of merely trading my liberty for hers, and I had to concur with that.

After we had agreed on all the details, I went into a small common room behind the bridge where the Captain and crew were waiting.

“So what’s it all about? Were you able to help?” Captain Thorpe asked anxiously.

“It seems that she’s on heat,” I answered, as Jeannie had suggested. “She’s desperate for a mate. Her hormones are going ballistic. What can be done about this?”

Thorpe’s jaw dropped. “That’s supposed to be impossible. I mean, her designers thought about that, and said they’d designed it out of her. In any case, there are no mates. All the propulsion units of this size are female.”

“Maybe she’ll settle for a smaller specimen. But you have to do something, or we’re all in danger.”

“So why you?”

I explained about the recent monkey campaign, how we had forced the company to rethink its experiment. “She hoped I could do the same for her.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Thorpe. “I’ll also get in touch with the Company and see what can be done for her.”

I returned to my cabin and waited. I went to dinner, then to my cabin again. In the morning, I went to breakfast, and back to my cabin.

Jeannie had said I needed to be on the bridge at five past nine.

The key was the Soul Song. The blue light intensified the experience but the Song was still effective even without the light, and Jeannie could direct it anywhere on the ship she wanted, including the bridge. She was going to direct it at the bridge at exactly nine hundred hours.

She had given me the code that would release her from her “harness”. Although Jeannie knew the code in case she ever had to give it to another crewmember in an emergency, she had no way to enter it herself. Only someone logged in and working under the Captain’s password at the Captain’s station on the bridge could enter it.

Ergo, to release Jeannie, I would have to enter the code from the Captain’s console while Thorpe was logged on and seated at his chair.

#

AT EIGHT FORTY in the morning, I dressed in the same clothes I had worn yesterday: beige shorts, green tanktop and runners. If anyone on the bridge roused enough to see me, my appearance needed to be attributable to hallucination, so I needed to look exactly as they remembered me from yesterday.

I made my way back through first class to the bridge door, peered through the big window, and saw a half-circle of wide-eyed, smiling faces gazing at nothing. I pulled out my mobile phone and sent Jeannie our pre-arranged signal, pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, opened the door, bounded across to the command chair, reached past Captain Thorpe’s limp, dangling arms, and entered the release code.

Even as I typed, the smiles started to fade. The Captain’s whiskered face began to twitch. I knew I had to get out – but I couldn’t just leave it at that.

I quickly typed on the Captain’s keyboard, “Goodbye Jeannie”.

Before I could even erase the words from the screen, they disappeared and were replaced by two letters in two hundred point Arial font: “GO” – which also disappeared immediately.

At that moment, the Captain’s eyes snapped into focus and he stared straight at me. And the next moment, even as Thorpe’s eyes glazed over again, I ‘heard’ it myself.

I sank to my knees as I ‘listened’. It felt like everyone I loved who had ever died was with me again, safe and well and happy. It felt like the moment the love of my life told me he loved me too. It felt like all the suffering of all the creatures in the world had suddenly ended.

But I had not forgotten where I was, or what mattered. Hallucinations had not yet started. I struggled to my feet, forced myself walk to the door, opened it and stepped out into the cool rush of the Antarctic breeze.

The Song and the joy cut off abruptly as I closed the door. I stumbled down the stairways, blinded by tears, somehow managing to remember to send Jeannie the signal that I was off the bridge.

I reached my cabin and gave way to grief: the knowledge that so many I loved were dead, that the love of my life had not loved me enough to stay, that the world was as full of suffering as ever.

Twenty minutes later, the hallucination was indistinguishable from a pleasant dream shattered by the workday alarm clock. I roused myself, burned the gloves in my cabin microwave, dropped the ash down the chute into the ship’s waste hold.

When Captain Thorpe saw me again, I must look different from his ‘hallucination’ on the bridge half an hour earlier. A blue and yellow sun frock did the trick.

Out on deck, people I recognised from the dining room, stood by the rail, gazing intently down at the sea.

“What’s going on?” I asked them.

“The ship’s stopped!” The guy didn’t know whether to be angry or scared. “We’ve just stopped. Right here in the middle of the ocean. We’re drifting. Can’t you hear?”

I listened. My heart’s ears still strained to hear the Song – but all I heard was the silence. The constant rowing/hissing of Jeannie’s body moving the ship, so continuous I had barely noticed it before, had ceased.

Jeannie had escaped.

Now for the last stage.

I made my way back through the first class section. In the blue-lit common room, everyone was wide awake, talking in loud, angry voices.

Reaching the door to the bridge, I shoved my face against the window, and waved.

Captain Thorpe was in his chair, looking appalled. He saw me and waved me in.

“What’s happened?” I demanded as though I had a perfect right to know.

“She’s gone. She directed the Song to the bridge. We all started hallucinating. I – somehow – while I was hallucinating, I must have punched in her release code. The computer tells me I did, anyway.”

He shook his head incredulously. “She’s not supposed to be able to control the hallucinations! The Song just stimulates the pleasure centres of the brain. The brain itself, the person’s own experience, supplies the visions!”

He looked up. “Will she come back, do you think, Dr Reeve? If she can’t find a mate…?”

“I have no idea.”

“I did my best,” he said glumly. “I told head office. They laughed at me.”

I felt a pang of guilt. “They can’t blame you. You warned them as soon as you knew about it.”

He rallied and spoke briskly. “We’ve dropped as many sea anchors as we own to stop us drifting far. The Company is sending zeppelins to airlift the passengers and crew. All bio-propulsion travel has been suspended pending an inquiry.”

The rest is denouement. We all got home safely. I gave evidence to the inquiry, sticking to my story about heat and hormones, which, of course, concurred with the electronic record of my conversation with Jeannie. Captain Thorpe was exonerated. If he ever remembered my cameo appearance in his hallucination that day, he doesn’t seem to have mentioned it to anyone.

Meanwhile, Jeannie is out there somewhere, photosynthesising herself into a vast marine forest. I sometimes imagine her singing to passing whales. (There are still a few whales! We saw them while we waited for the zeppelins.) One day I hope she’ll be able to sing to her own kind – but who knows?

I do sometimes wonder, though, what will happen if Jeannie ever really does come on heat!

Frankie Seymour is an environmental and social scientist, an animal rights activist and a writer (not necessarily in that order). She writes poetry, songs, plays, non-fiction and speculative fiction, and has won prizes or commendations in more than a score of Australian literary awards.

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