[+] Spoiler

Ivy Rose
by Dan Hart

Ivy tried to imagine how it would feel to be bereft of his musical ability, but could not. The Transfer Specialist smiled at him with warm cheeks and wide eyes. His nametag, elegant as the sleek office, sparkled gold: "Ted Seals." Ivy studied Ted's smile and concluded it was a lie.

"How much would you give me?" Ivy asked, forcing steady breaths. His heart thumped three times for every tick of the wall clock. He needed at least ninety-two thousand for Rose's cochlear implants. He hoped for a hundred and fifty, despite the horror stories of artistic skills selling for less than twenty thousand per decade of experience.

Some of the warmth left Ted's smile. "Well, you have nine years of professional musical experience--although that was a decade ago. Artistic neural pathways aren't in high demand these days with the economy what it is, and they fade with age and neglect."

Ivy's bones felt heavy. "How much?"

Ted pulled in his lower lip, shook his head, and sighed. "I like you, Ivy. I like your music. Your wife has the most phenomenal voice I've ever heard. I bought everything you sold. I love your songs." Ted thumped his chest and nodded, as Ivy had done at the end of each set. "They're powerful and romantic. Majestic. I wish you had never stopped."

Ivy soaked up the praise like a dry sponge, and closed his eyes in nostalgia. Few remembered Ivy Rose, their two-person cabaret band. He could still feel his fingers rolling over ivory keys and hear Rose's glorious voice, lustrous like golden sunlit chords dancing on cloudy staves.

"Eighty thousand," Ted said. "That presumes twenty years' professional experience, you understand. Not the nine you actually have. The boss won't be happy, but you deserve it."

"That's not enough!" Ivy shook his head; his eyebrows scrunched. "We weren't rock stars, but we were popular. Surely my talent is worth more than that."

"Your talent, absolutely. Sadly, we can't harvest that. Only your neural pathways. What the buyer does with those is up to his own faculty."

"It's not enough."

"I wish I could do more--I really do adore your music. But adding additional experience would start your professional career before you were sixteen. I can't stretch the truth that far."

Eighty thousand was still eighty thousand; Ivy only needed twelve grand more. Perhaps he could sell a kidney.

"May I ask why you are doing this?" Ted pressed his fingertips together and leaned forward.

"For Rose. Her voice works fine--it's because of her ears that she can't sing. There's nothing to be done about the cancer, but..." Ivy breathed heavily through his nose. His pause was not interrupted. "I just wanted to let her hear again. Let her sing again. She needs a cochlear implant, but insurance won't pay for it. I've been saving on the side but I'll never have the hundred grand." His eyes stung. "Never."

"I see." Ted stared down at his desk. When he looked up his smile was gone. "Are you sure you want this?" he asked. "We can give you an advance of a couple weeks, of course. But after that we will take your ability. You won't be able to play anymore. Are you sure you want that?"

"Of course I want it!" Ivy bowed his head, but his voice didn't break. "She's given me so much. I need to give music back to her."

Ted nodded. "What other skills do you have?"

"What? None worth anything."

"Are you sure? Can you read?"

"Yes, but--"

"Ten thousand."

"I can't give up reading!"

"You could always re-learn. Are you a fast learner?"

"No." Ivy's chest clenched around feelings of worthlessness. "Not at all."

"How about unique experiences? Perhaps the memory of your career and romance?"

"Never! I would never give those up."

Ted shook his head and sighed. On the wall behind him, the clock ticked to fill the silence.

"I can do one thing besides music," Ivy said. "I can draw, a bit."

Ted's face brightened. "Oh? For how many years?"

"Casually since, well, forever. Doodling in school, just comics and sketches for friends since then. Want me to draw something?"

"Yes, absolutely."

Ivy turned his resume over and drew Rose singing on the back. His fingers had sketched her curves hundreds of times. He longed for her singing lips and gave her flowing hair she hadn't had in years.

He smiled when he finished, but Ted frowned. "It's not professional," he said. "I mean, it looks nice, but there's no perspective and the proportions are wrong. We'd be lucky to sell those engrams in a bargain bin."

Ivy stared at the floor. His jaw trembled.

Ted tapped his desk, staccato at first, then heavier as the pace increased. "OK. I'll give you fifteen thousand for them. As a favor for Ivy Rose."

"Thank you," Ivy said. He sighed as his chest relaxed. "How long do I have?"

"Two weeks, if you sign today."

"Thank you." He signed the contract, feeling only the tiniest pang of regret.

* * *

Rose was fitted that very afternoon.

Ivy played his grand piano until his fingertips swelled to purple-black agony. He played and Rose sang, and their hearts embraced in adagio harmony.

They barely ate. Barely slept. They existed for the music.

Rose died a month after the Transfer Engineers took Ivy's neural pathways. She sat at the piano on her final day, and begged Ivy to sit beside her, insisting he might remember something.

But not even chopsticks remained.

"I don't care," he'd said. "Those were the most beautiful two weeks of my life."

"Then promise me one thing." She had smiled so seductively. To cement her request, Ivy was sure.

"Anything."

"Learn to play again."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Tuesday, December 18th, 2012.

Author Story Notes

When I was a teenager, my closest friend told me she would rather go blind than deaf. I didn't understand it at the time.

Author Bio

Dan is a systems engineer working, reading, and hiking in Silicon Valley. His work has previously appeared in a handful of eclectic publications. However, this is his first professional sale. Dan maintains a blog at danhartfiction.com.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

This story was scheduled about two months ago. It doesn't track current events, but also doesn't provide the escape you may have been seeking with your coffee this morning. For that, we are sorry.
-Michele and Jonathan

The Hades Hotline
by Alex Petri

***Editor's Note: Mature Theme, Disturbing Tale***

"You have to call them today," I said. "We've waited too long. We should have done that the day she disappeared."

Karen became suddenly very busy washing the dishes.

"Karen."

"If you feel so strongly about calling, then call," Karen said. For a second I caught her reflection in the window over the sink. The angle was funny; the darkness behind the glass turned it into a streaky mirror where I could see the rectangular gleam of the lampshade and the wan oval of her face. If you forgot for a second that it was a reflection, you could half convince yourself that there was a pale glinting world on the other side of the window where a thin shadow of Karen was doing the dishes with her mouth set in a tight line. Maybe if you broke the glass you might be able to see her better. It was like being on the wrong side of an aquarium.

The whole month had been like that. The world seemed to be swimming behind thick protective glass. Most people heard your daughter was missing and then every time you tried to talk to them, they got these very funny smiles like you would put on if you sat on broken glass in the middle of dinner with the Queen. The longer you talked the worse it got. Then they bolted and you never saw them again. No, that wasn't quite fair. Maybe they'd bring you a casserole. But you had the sense that they had a meter running somewhere while they talked to you.

"You're down a tunnel again," she said.

"Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. I was just saying." She turned from the sink. It was still like looking at a reflection of her. Maybe that was how she would look from now on, just a little too far away to touch.

I walked to the kitchen table and rubbed my thumb over Amy's plate where dust had started to gather. The house was always full of dust. But to me it seemed to collect on her plate faster than anywhere else in the house.

"Please," I said.

"I'll call tomorrow," she said.

"You said that yesterday."

"I just--I'm not ready to know."

"She might not be there," I said. "Then we could have some real hope instead of just tearing our guts out every day like this."

Karen hugged her arms around herself. I went and put my arms around her. It was like trying to hug a hologram.

"You think she might not be there?" she said.

"We'll only know if we call."

"You want to call because you think she's not there," she said. "If you thought she'd be there you wouldn't want to know."

"That's why you don't want to," I said. "Because you think she's dead."

She pulled away with a little cry. I let her go.

"At least if we called we would know," I said. "We would know. I want to know if I'm supposed to be mourning or waiting. I can't do both much longer."

"Can't you?" she said. She looked at me. Her looks were a language I was losing. This one was a whole sentence and I had no idea what it said.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "I'm going to call them," I said.

Karen sat down on the edge of the table, making the plate rattle. She seemed suddenly very tired. As drugs go, hope is one of the worst for the body.

I pushed the call button and put the phone on speaker.

All right, I thought. I'm calling them, and we're going to know if she's there or not. And if she's not we can keep on with this miserable business of waiting and wondering--missing girls are never missing anywhere good. They never turn out to be in convents or the circus or doing prize-winning research. But still, alive would be something. We could deal with alive.

Or if she were there already on the other side, we could deal with that. We could pay for a call. I could afford to give them that much of my soul. We could say all those meaningless sweet things you say to the dead, while she still remembered who we were, even shrunk down to the miserable dimensions of thin voices in a phone. We could use the college fund and travel to press our hands up against the glass and maybe if we were lucky get her to glance back and turn a baffled smile on us. Hell, we could make a weekend of it, ride the glass-walled bus past Helen of Troy and the dazed bearded shade that might be Shakespeare. We could let go.

The phone rang a few times. Then it started to play a menu of options. The voice reading the options was toneless and male.

"You've reached the Other Side," it said. "To inquire about recent check-ins, press one. To speak to a recent arrival, press two. To speak to an arrival within the last ten years, press three. To speak to a celebrity resident, press four. To inquire about rates, press five. For other options, stay on the line."

I looked at Karen. She wasn't looking at me. Her fingers were clenched tight around her arm. I pressed one.

A male voice answered after a few rings.

"My name is Sam Inchus," I said.

"Sir."

"I'm calling about my daughter."

Karen began sobbing quietly.

"You want to see if she's checked in?"

I looked at Karen. She didn't look at me. Her fingers were going white on her arm.

"Could I have a name?" the voice asked.

"Amy," I said. "Amy Inchus."

"Just a moment," the voice said.

Suddenly Karen reached over and lunged at the button to end the call. The phone went silent. She looked apologetically at me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't I can't I can't I can't." She began crying in earnest, loud and choking and ugly like glass shattering. I held her while she did. I could feel her heartbeat warm and loud and miserable and fast. Mine matched it. We were both on the wrong side of the glass, but for a moment we were there together.

"Tomorrow," I said. "We can call tomorrow."

She sniffled and nodded. "Tomorrow."

I opened the silverware drawer and took out a clean fork and knife and placed them next to Amy's plate.


The End
-------------------------------------------------------
Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Monday, December 17th, 2012.

Author Story Notes

I was reading Ovid's Metamorphoses, and there was a passage about a river god crying because his daughter had vanished (wafted away by Zeus, as so often happens). His river god friends were all gathering around with the river god equivalent of casseroles to console him, but his lament that the worst part was that she hadn't checked into Hades and he couldn't tell what had happened to her really struck me. I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where that was possible, and this is what came out.

Author Bio

Alex Petri is a recent college graduate based in Washington, DC, an alternate reality in its own right. She studied classics and English, and now spends most of her days writing for a newspaper. This is her first published science fiction, and she hopes it won't be her last. You can find her milling about the Internet on Twitter @petridishes.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

Luciene wrote:But it's called "Death before Dishonor"

FOUNDER OF THE SAM THE BARMAN FANCLUB: QUOTE IN YOUR SIG TO JOIN

[+] Spoiler

The investigators arrived in the morning. Father Laughlin and Father Sauer trudged through the dense, chilly fog from their shuttle to the spaceport terminal just as the twin suns of the Tau system began to paint the eastern horizon in yellow hues.

"Thank Christ you're finally here," said Abbot Fierni, who was waiting for them in the relative warmth of the terminal. "I've been bombarding the Vatican with messages for weeks. He's on to The First Epistle of John by now and should be finished within days. I fervently prayed that you would arrive in time to witness the miracle firsthand."

Both priests shook his hand and made no comment on the timing of their arrival. The Abbot was outrageously lucky; the Vatican's typical response to a miracle claim this far out on the edge of occupied space was measured in years rather than weeks. The fact that they were nearby, looking into a stigmata report on a planet only ten light years away, was a minor miracle in its own right. But informing the Abbot, so certain of the urgency of his case, would've been unkind.



"Here he is." The Abbot made a show of opening the thin wooden door into one of the monastery's living spaces. Inside the small room was a bipedal insectoid alien, its five foot tall chitinous frame hunched over a workbench. It was writing in an enormous book.

The alien's pincer held a thin bone stick that looked like a featherless quill. With rapid, fluid motions it dipped the stick into a glass inkwell and applied it to a half-empty page. It wrote neat lines of symbols so precise they could be mistaken for having been printed. There was not an ink stain or a careless mark in sight.

"That's Koine Greek, all right," Father Laughlin whispered, not wanting to distract the alien.

"It is," nodded the Abbot. "He started with Genesis and made his way through all of the Old Testament in a month or so, as best as I can tell. Wrote down the whole blessed thing in Hebrew and Aramaic, he did. I can't read those languages but I've been comparing the symbols to an original and it looks to be an exact match. Then he moved right along to the Gospels and switched to Greek."

Sauer cringed at the Abbot's loud voice reverberating through the room, and the man's insistence on calling the alien a "he."

"You can speak at full volume," Fierni added. "Xitzl has been in some sort of a trance since he began transcribing the holy texts."

Abbot Fierni riffled through a thick stack of completed pages, lifting them only a few inches off the left side of the tome so as not to disturb the page Xitzl was currently writing on.

Father Laughlin took a step forward and leaned in for a better look. Unperturbed, the alien continued to fill the page with line after line of Greek script. Laughlin crossed himself and retreated toward the door.



"This isn't a miracle," Father Sauer raged in the privacy of a study the two investigators commandeered at the monastery. "It's a travesty. Or maybe some sort of a scam. Or some alien idea of a joke. Who knows what this critter is capable of--perhaps its species can memorize pages of text at a single glance."

"Don't rush to judgment," cautioned Father Laughlin. "According to the Abbot, this Xitzl creature expressed interest in our faith long before the miracle business. That in itself is extremely rare."

"Little good would it do it," grumbled Sauer. "The oversized cockroach has no soul, and so it can't be saved."

"It's archaic attitudes like this that prevent more of our intergalactic brothers from joining in Christ's love. Why should they, if they're told that his love is reserved only for the descendants of Adam?"

"Careful," said Sauer. "Last I checked this 'archaic attitude' is still the official position of the Vatican."

"I pray that His Holiness may one day reconsider," said Laughlin. "Anyway, I anticipated the eidetic memory argument. So I sent a recording of the completed pages to the experts at the Holy See. Their findings were surprising, to say the least."

"Oh?" Sauer looked up sharply. "What have they discovered?"

"The Bible our alien friend is writing down isn't just accurate--it's overly complete. In addition to the standard texts, Xitzl appears to have added in all the apocrypha. And I mean all of it--including texts not available outside of the Vatican vaults for over two millennia."

Sauer stared at his fellow investigator, head tilted.

"There are passages in there so obscure it took the labor of some of our best scholars just to verify their authenticity. But verify it they did. Xitzl didn't simply copy a Bible he found in some hotel room. We may have finally discovered a genuine miracle. This is the real deal."

"So what are we supposed to do with that?" Sauer got up and began to pace across the study. "Invite this alien into the College of Cardinals? Beatify it after it dies? Make it Saint Bug of Who-Knows-Where? I'm not comfortable with this."

"For now, we do what we always do. Observe and wait. Xitzl's made it to the middle of Revelation already. Perhaps it can shed some light on the mystery directly, when the book is finished."



Father Laughlin burst into the study. He was disheveled, his clothes cut in several places, stains of fetid orange discharge covering the front of his shirt. He clutched the large handwritten volume to his side.

"Come," he told Sauer. "There's no time to explain. I must leave this place now. Please," he pleaded, "hurry."

Reluctantly, Father Sauer joined his associate. Laughlin revealed nothing on the ride to the spaceport. He shivered, clutched the book to his chest, and prayed intently, his lips voicelessly sounding out the supplications. It wasn't until their shuttle was racing away from Tau Prime that Sauer coaxed a few words from the perturbed priest.

"I didn't mean to do it," Laughlin kept saying. "I didn't know it was so fragile, so brittle. All I wanted to do was to make it stop writing."

"Calm yourself, Father," said Sauer sternly, "and explain."

"I watched the alien finish writing down the Book of Revelation," said Laughlin. "I stood there and watched, eager to know what would happen next, after it ceased writing." Laughlin stared past Sauer at the shuttle wall as he recounted the event. "Only it didn't stop, didn't even pause. It kept going. It just kept going...."

Laughlin focused on Sauer now, his eyes full of pain.

"I didn't mean to hurt it. I tried to take away the book, or the writing tool; anything to make it stop, but it wouldn't comply. We fought." Laughlin pointed at the stains on his clothes. "I... broke it. Crushed its body with a few careless blows. Killed it." Laughlin's last sentence was barely audible.

"What did..." Sauer began to ask but stopped himself and reached out a hand instead. Wordlessly, Laughlin handed over the book.

Sauer flipped through the pages to find the last one filled with text. There were twenty verses in the last chapter of Revelation, just as there should have been. But it didn't end there. The next book of the Bible was started on the following page, a text written in a language Sauer had never seen before, a language not of Earth.

The two priests sat in silence for a long time. Finally Sauer took hold of the last page and tore it from the tome. He methodically ripped at it, shredding it into smaller and smaller pieces, until nothing discernible remained.

"Even the Holy See isn't prepared for certain truths," he told Laughlin. The other priest nodded slowly.

Sauer disposed of the destroyed page and began preparing a eulogy. He decided that someone should pray for Xitzl's soul after all.


The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:



This story was sent to you on Thursday, December 27th, 2012.

Author Bio

Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. His short fiction has been published in Nature, Penumbra, Buzzy Magazine and many other magazines and anthologies. This is his third story at Daily Science Fiction. Alex's fiction is linked at alexshvartsman.com.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

Fool's Gold
by Melissa Mead

"Of course it's fool's gold! You gave me dirty hay, not straw. What did you expect?"

Rumplestiltskin left his dissatisfied customer swearing at his pile of pyrite and started for home. Dirty hay had nothing to do with it, but it could be dangerous to say that the gold wouldn't spin for the Mayor because Hizzoner wanted it for no better reason than greed.

His mood lifted as his wife approached, a dear familiar bundle on her arm.

"We came to walk home with you, Rumple. Aura missed her Papa."

"And her Papa's glad to see both of you," he said, hugging his wife and kissing his daughter. I've had enough of the schemes of powerful... Oh no."

The young woman in the enveloping black cloak couldn't have been more conspicuous. She rushed up to Rumplestiltskin, sobbing.

"They said you'd torn yourself in two! But I can't... gold... "

"Your Majesty," he said, less coldly than he'd intended, "breathe. You're making a spectacle of yourself. Which, I suspect, is the last thing you want." His wife gave him a questioning look. He nodded.

The girl gasped. "But nobody must know I'm here!"

Rumplestiltskin sighed. "Your Majesty, if you'll follow my wife, we'll talk privately at my home."

The girl's mouth hung open in a most unqueenly fashion, but she followed.

* * *

"...so now he wants me to spin enough gold to refill the Royal Treasury, and I don't know how, so I came to... to ask you to renew our bargain."

"What, to give me your firstborn child if I spin gold for you?" Rumplestiltskin leaned over and tickled Aura's toes. "As you can see, I have my own now."

"I'm the Queen now. I could make you."

He stopped cold. "That would be... most unwise, Your Majesty."

No one moved, not even Aura. Then the Queen burst into sobs.

"He said he'd kill me and the baby! I know you hate me, but he's a baby!"

"The King would kill the Crown Prince?" Rumplestiltskin's wife asked.

"He would, my dear." Rumplestiltskin stood. "Your Majesty, I will not spin for you."

Both women gasped.

"But I will give you my spindle. You may spin as much gold as you wish."

"Oh, thank you!"

"My price," he went on, "is that you guard your child more dearly than any gold. Otherwise all you spin will be worthless." He handed over the spindle. She snatched it and ran out. Rumplestiltskin and his wife exchanged looks.

"Not a word of thanks. She hasn't changed a bit."

"But, Rumple, you said that spindle's spun nothing but fool's gold for months."

"I've spun for fools. If she's a fool who values nothing but gold, that's all she'll get. But if she values her child's life, or even her own, more than gold, then gold she'll get."

"The king doesn't value either of them. The poor wee boy."

"Why do you think I wanted to take him away from there? But at least they won't harm him as long as he's the source of their wealth."

"I don't envy them."

Rumplestiltskin put one arm around his wife and cradled his child with the other. "Neither do I."


The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013.

Author Bio

Melissa Mead lives in Upstate NY. You may have seen her stories in DSF before. She's a member of SFWA and Codex, and her Web page is carpelibris.wordpress.com.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

Harmonies of Time
by Caroline M. Yoachim

You do not know me yet, my love, but I can hear you in my future. You are there from the beginning--at first just a few stray notes, but your presence quickly grows into a beautiful refrain. I wish you could hear time as I do, my love, but this song was never meant to be heard. The future should be chronobviated, gathered up in feathery pink fronds with delicate threads that waver in and out of alternate timelines. The past should be memographed, absorbed into a sturdy gray tail that stretches back to the beginning of the universe. We humans have neither fronds nor tails, but when the Eternals wanted to talk to us, they found a way to work around that.

* * *

The melody of my past is simple.

When I was ten years old, I heard my mother's voice for the first time. The doctors worried that I might be too old to adapt to the change. They told me that the sensation might be overwhelming. They explained that sound wouldn't be the same for me as for a child born with hearing. But none of that mattered. As a ten-year-old child, I saw the procedure as a way to be normal, just like all the other kids, and I jumped at the chance.

When the doctors turned my cochlear implant on for the first time, I was in a quiet room. My mother gave me a moment to adjust to the hum of the lights, and then she spoke to me. She told me that she loved me, signing as she said the words. When I heard her voice, I cried.

I never dreamed that in my lifetime I would gain another sense, but when the Eternals made first contact, they did not ask for politicians or for scientists. They asked for people like me. I had already learned a new sense, and I already had external sensors wired into my nervous system. With my permission, the Eternals altered my cochlear implant, and what they sense as time I hear as music. So much of what they wanted to say to us was contained in the harmonies of the future; they felt they couldn't communicate with us any other way.

It was disorienting at first, far worse than when my cochlear implant had been turned on. That had simply been a cacophony of sound, and the doctors had kept the room quiet to ease my transition. My new sense was a cacophony of time, and not even the Eternals could silence it. Every possible future of the universe echoed in my brain, and it nearly drove me mad. It was you that saved me, my love, even though we have not met. The possibility of you gave me something to hold on to. Something human, something simple, something real.

* * *

In the harmonies of my future, we meet today and tomorrow and next year and never. It is impossible to say for sure, but you sound closer now, so I suspect the time is near. I joke and you laugh. This is important, because in the strands of harmony where this doesn't happen, I tend to lose you. We date for weeks and months and years and not at all. I have the advantage of knowing which harmonies end well, so I will take you on the zip line tour that you will love, and avoid that disastrous trip to France.

I propose and you propose and we never speak of marriage. We have a beautiful ceremony in a church and on a beach and at the county courthouse. All our friends come to celebrate with us, or we elope and celebrate alone. We honeymoon in Mexico and Spain and Alaska and sometimes not at all because we can't afford the trip. We buy a house and live with your parents and rent a one-bedroom apartment on the twenty-fourth floor of a high-rise.

Sometimes we have children and sometimes not. Either way is fine with me, love, but there are things I can't control, even with everything I know. We have two girls and one boy and no children even though we try. We lose children before they are born and from sickness I cannot prevent and as soldiers in a foreign war. There are strands in the harmony where you resent me for failing to stop these things. There are strands where I hate myself. But there are other strands with so much joy. Yes, either way is fine with me. The happiness is worth the risk.

We grow old together and alone, but the aging is inevitable--avoided only by death. We get glasses and you get a hearing aid, and the harmonies of time start to slip away from me. I prefer the strands where you are at my side when I die, but sometimes you pass first and I am there with you.

* * *

The Eternals warned us of a catastrophe that will and won't happen, two million years from now. They believed their message was urgent. They failed to comprehend the timescale of our lives, even after we explained. Once they had given their warning, they left in search of others who could not foresee the coming danger.

I kept my implant, even after the Eternals moved on. I am changed forever by this sense of what has been and what may someday be. Even when the song threatens to overwhelm me, I must listen. I would not cut out my eyes because the light is too bright; I would not cut out my tongue after tasting something bitter. I cling to the song of time even though it makes me doubt my connection to humanity. I am different, yes. But I still cry when I think of my mother's voice, cracking with emotion as she tells me that she loves me, the first time I ever heard her. The memory helps me remember who I am, no matter how disconnected I may feel. That memory is the next best thing to having you.

* * *

The harmonies of when we meet collapse into a single note, and we are meeting now. I tell a joke, and wait for you to laugh. Oh, I hope you laugh. Please, please laugh. It would be so hard to lose you, now that you are here.

For an agonizing moment I wait, and the harmonies of our future waver. Then you laugh, a sound as sweet as the first time I heard my mother's voice. A sound that bodes well for our future.

In ninety-eight percent of all the harmonies I hear, I love you.


The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Tuesday, January 1st, 2013.

Author Story Notes

This story was inspired by a video I saw of a baby who got a cochlear implant and was able to hear his mother's voice for the first time. It got me thinking about what it would be like to interpret a new type of sensory information, and whether learning a new sense might be useful for communicating with aliens.

Author Bio

Caroline M. Yoachim is a writer and photographer living in Seattle, Washington. She is a Clarion West graduate and was nominated for a Nebula Award for her 2010 novelette, "Stone Wall Truth." Her fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Lightspeed, and Shimmer, among other places. For more about Caroline, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com. Go to dailysciencefiction.com to look up her previous stories at DSF.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

Unwanted
by Holly Jennings

A cry echoed through the cemetery.

The ghoul stood in the graveyard, working mechanically, like the crankshafts on a steam train. His shovel cut through soil, digging holes and filling them. So many dead. So very many dead.

He wore a ragged shirt, three sizes too big, covered in dirt and holes the size of baseballs. His pants were too short, ripped off halfway down his calves, he had no shoes. Dressed like this, he worked in the cemetery.

Until he heard the cry.

A living dead grown restless? He looked down the line of graves, fresh mounds of overturned earth. No clawing fingers had broken through the surface in need of a good shovel-smashing--in need of a good convincing to just lie still. Nope. Nothing.

So the ghoul lifted his head, gaze turning to the asylum beyond the graveyard. An enormous edifice of iron gates and barred windows. But it towered silently in the background, glowing against the twilight mist.

The cry came again. Hearing it now, he decided it wasn't the usual insane shriek of the living dead, or even a werewolf's howl.

No. This was something else.

He staggered forward, weaving between graves and the willow trees, and dropped his shovel. The wooden handle clanged against a headstone and tumbled down, landing with a dull thud against fresh earth. As he stumbled around, blades of dew-covered grass curled over his toes, though he felt nothing through his rotting skin. The pleasure of cooling grass, its soft texture, was lost on him.

He lifted a small rock and peered beneath it. Hmm. Not there.

He continued forward, but found nothing in the dim moonlight. Just shadows behind trees. Darkness clouding the graves. But across the cemetery, the sound grew louder.

There. Just behind that.

The ghoul crept up to an oversized tomb, wrapped his fingers around the stone, and peeked over the edge.

A baby?

Lying on the ground, pink-fleshed and healthy. Wailing.

The ghoul covered his ears and looked around, frantically searching for its owners. Nothing. The graveyard was empty and silent, except for the screaming infant.

Crying. Too much crying.

He tiptoed up to it, crawling around the tomb, and poked the baby, tapping rapidly on its chest. Hello? Stop crying.

No luck.

He pushed up the baby's chin, closing its mouth. There. Stop crying. The ghoul smiled to himself. But the baby squirmed, smacked the ghoul's hand away, and screamed even louder. The blanket around it came loose in the child's fit. Its teddy bear tumbled away to land face down in the grass.

Frustrated, the ghoul grunted, sat cross-legged, and swooped the baby into his arms. He retrieved the lost bear, wiped it on his pants and tucked it back into the blanket as he fixed it around the infant, swaddling it tight in his arms.

Stay still. Stop crying.

Tears subsiding, the baby opened its eyes and looked up at the ghoul. And surprisingly, as they sat there staring at each other, the ghoul had no thoughts of devouring the child. Surely it couldn't be corrupt with the lies and disdain that made flesh so delicious.

The ghoul stroked its face, wiping away trails of tears. The baby stared at its caretaker and, despite the ghoul's decaying face and missing nose, didn't cower in fear or turn a lip in disgust. Instead, it snuggled into the monster.

The ghoul thought he felt his heart flicker, and shook his head until the foolish notion disappeared. How absurd. That organ rotted away long ago.

Then the infant's chin wrinkled and lips puckered, growing weepy again.

No, no. Don't cry.

The ghoul desperately looked around, trying to find something to please the baby, and remembered the large, round watch tucked into his pants pocket. He pulled it out and smashed it on the ground so hard, both covers opened--front and back. No matter. It was broken before. But he hoped the shiny glass faceplate would entertain the infant, despite the dead arms and lifeless innards of the timepiece.

He brought it up to the baby's face and bounced the chain. It glimmered in the heavy moonlight. The baby laughed and curled a thumb around its smiling lip. But when the watch swiveled around to the back, the infant suddenly reached out and snatched it between its fingers.

The insides were frozen, gears trapped in motion. The baby shook it and, as if through the infant's will, the components started to turn. The ghoul almost felt the moving arms and the spinning gears echoing in his chest as the pocket watch came to life, a beauty he'd never known before. He looked down at the baby and noticed it, eyes wide, also studying the mechanisms with the same fascination.

So together, they watched the spinning gears turn the hands of time. After several minutes, the ghoul peeked up at the surrounding graveyard. The owners would be back soon.

Yes. Soon.

But as time passed, it stayed still and quiet in the cemetery. No signs of life, of anyone coming back.

He rocked as he waited. The baby yawned, eyes fluttering shut with the pocket watch still clutched between its little fingers. Peering down at the infant, swaddled in the blanket with its teddy bear nestled against its cheek, the ghoul saw an unwanted soul, not unlike himself. Both forgotten. Alone in the darkness. So under the vigilant eye of the moon, he kept the infant in his arms all through the night.

And even as the child drifted to sleep, the revolving gears of the watch never stopped ticking--a rhythm matched with the soft thumping of the ghoul's beating heart.


The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Monday, December 31st, 2012.

Author Bio

Holly Jennings lives in Tecumseh, Ontario with her Chow Chow named Jake. She works for an engineering and architectural firm during the day and spends her evenings gallivanting with ghouls, gargoyles, and other creatures of the night. This is her first published piece.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

In our cover story, it was reported that electronics in the city and some suburbs had been disabled by an "electromagnetic pulse, or EMP." In fact, there was no such burst. Instead, the Visitor itself appears to be continuously emanating the electromagnetic radiation.

The extent of the Downtown Caldera was misstated. It is bounded roughly by the Boulevard of the Allies to the south and by Grant Street to the east, extending north through the former Cultural District as far as the Allegheny River. See detailed map on A3.

We incorrectly reported that all bridges in the downtown and surrounding areas were impassable. In fact, as yesterday's Times-Dispatch went to press, both the Birmingham Bridge and the Hot Metal Bridge were intact. However, the Visitor has since pulverized both in the irresistible clutches of its sixty-foot claws.

Moreover, those claws should not have been described as "adamantium." Adamantium is a fictional substance of impossible hardness and strength. Scientists we interviewed suggested "adamantium" as a proposed name for the so-far impenetrable armor of the Visitor, but those suggestions do not represent a scientific consensus.

One of our correspondents repeatedly and erroneously referred to the Downtown Caldera as a "yawning hellgate." In fact, it is not known whether the caldera is a gateway and, if so, whether it leads to Hell. In addition, the caldera is not surrounded by "curtains of sulfurous fog," but rather by the steam of the boiling river. Finally, descriptions of "omnipresent screams" in the area should not have attributed those screams to "the wailing souls of the dead and the damned."

Surviving city officials inform us that we misquoted the Mayor as saying, "It's the end times! It's the end times! Oh God, it's judgment day!" No alternate quotation was provided, and the Mayor himself could no longer be reached for additional comment.

We erroneously speculated on the line of succession through which emergency mayoral powers might pass in a crisis. Events have since proved that the City Clerk and Deputy City Clerk are not in the line of succession, as they are not elected officials.

The photograph of the Visitor curled up on the so-called "nest" it constructed of human skeletons was taken in Highland Park, not Frick Park as the caption stated. In addition, the photo was cropped against Times-Dispatch guidelines by an editor attempting to obscure viscera in the foreground. The uncropped photo is reproduced on A6. Warning: Viewing this photo may cause madness in the weak-minded.

The estimate for the number of eggs in the Visitor's nest should have read 10,000, not 1,000. Moreover, the incubation period for the eggs can now be confidently stated as approximately 16 hours.

Finally, we misspelled the name of Miriam Bethel, a member of the School Board of Directors, in our article about the failed levies. Her last name has only one "l".

Like all mankind today, we regret our errors.


The End

Rate this story on a scale of 1 to 7 rocket dragons:

0123456

This story was sent to you on Thursday, January 3rd, 2013.

Author Bio

M. Bennardo's short stories appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, several times at Daily Science Fiction and elsewhere. He is also editor of the Machine of Death series of anthologies. He lives in Clevleand, Ohio, but people anywhere can find him at mbennardo.com.

Please visit DailyScienceFiction.com for more stories!

[+] Spoiler

We expected them to be better at it. The aliens. You've only got to go to the movies to know that we expected explosions, telepathy, ray guns. We thought it would be something drawn-out and gruesome, or maybe quick and painless. But either way--big.

The invasion looked bad in the beginning. On the first night, we saw weird damn flashes in the sky over the gulch, and the sound of the ships made lightning crawl across my shoulders. Earth's cities took some damage, but it didn't make much sense. They went for bridges and highway overpasses.

And out here in the middle of nowhere, it was all bark, no bam.

The stuff that ended it was pink. And it made everyone's nostrils burn for an hour like we'd just snorted soda up the wrong set of pipes, but it did the job.

I don't know where it came from, but Earth's governments shot it into the atmosphere a couple of days after the invasion started. Within hours, all that was left was the cleanup. Pale gray ships drifting through the clouds like ghostly stingrays. Millions and millions of bodies, mostly theirs.

No little green men for us. I saw footage of bog mummies on an educational special once, and the bodies are kind of like that. Thin and shiny and dark, with a crumpled look to them. Taller than humans, but frail. Easy to drag.

Around here, we haul them out to the Big Empty and burn them. Don't want the buzzards getting into them. We douse the aliens in gasoline even though they don't really need it, and they take to the fire like paper.

Some of the kids cheer, some of the adults cheer, like I hear they used to do at hangings.

We cleared the town in the first week, and maybe it should have stopped there, but the corpses didn't seem to be rotting. Spreading the cleanup out into the Big Empty made sense. It's ours as much as it is anybody else's. The government isn't really going to get around to it. It's something to do that feels like helping.

The smoke scours my nose and eyes and reminds me of the pink stuff.

Jim brought free beer to the first couple of burnings and passed it around, but things go back to normal fast. Now you've got to go to the bar if you need a cold one afterward, and you've got to pay.

I'm on my third, staring at the muted news on the screen over the bar, when Tiny, who isn't, busts through the door like he has the Devil after him.

"I need a gun!" he hollers. His gut shakes independently of the rest of him, as if it has its own special panic inside of it. "Somebody give me a gun."

"What the hell, Tiny?" says Jim. "That's a new door."

Tiny's eyes roll around the room until they find me. "Berto," he says, stumbling towards me. "Berto, you've got a gun? I need a gun. I need a weapon."

I drain the last of my beer and thunk the bottle down on the bar. "In the truck."

I keep my .22 behind the seats, because that's where my daddy kept his. "What's doin'?"

"Roxy's got one of them," he says. "She's got one of them under her shed."

I think of armadillos first. How some of the damn things burrow under wherever they like and even the dogs can't drag them out. But I know Tiny wouldn't be screaming about the wildlife.

"How'd one of them get up under there?"

"It's alive," Tiny says.

Of course it must be, because he wouldn't need the gun otherwise, wouldn't need me. But a live one doesn't make any more sense than the armadillos.

"My nieces play around that shed," says Tiny. "My nieces. Out in the backyard every day with one of them under there."

I think about tossing him the keys to my pickup, but that's not what Tiny really wants. And the beer isn't as cold as usual. "I'm coming."

Jim pulls a handgun I never knew he had from the cabinet behind the cash register and follows us out the door.

* * *

Sally, who was not quite my wife, left me a long time ago because she didn't like my work. Not the odd jobs, but killing animals. It wasn't very decent of her after ten years of almost-marriage, but that's how things fell out. I sent her a Christmas card right after she left, before I was sure that the leaving was for good, and she sent a goat in my name to some tiny Asian village I'd never heard of before. A nanny goat that would provide "healthful milk and hope" to a family in need.

I was pretty sure after that.

I don't even kill them when I can help it. Traps work fine for most. But sometimes things need to be taken care of quickly.

I deal with it all. Packs that come out of the Big Empty and bother the livestock. Rabid dogs. The feral cats that overrun the public dumpsters every spring. And people call me a lot for the armadillos too, because of the leprosy scare. I even take care of snakes, though most around here don't have a problem putting a half dozen of their own bullets into something that slithers.

Sally had a problem with it. She was sweet, and I guess I'm not.

Tiny isn't sweet, but he is scared. For all that he ran into the bar yelling for a gun, we all knew he'd really wanted me. I'm the kind of man who's good for messes.

I follow his truck back to Roxy's place. It's way out past the edge of town, with no neighbors. Jim vibrates in the passenger seat next to me, slapping his pistol against his thigh and muttering something that sounds a lot like Hail Mary, except if Jim was religious I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be Catholic.

"I think Tiny's full of it," he says as we pass the gas station. It's still missing a few windows. The sun is setting behind it, and it's rimmed in red. "Roxy's probably got a rabbit hole. They're all dead or we'd have heard otherwise."

"Yeah." It's not that I think Jim is right, just that I don't feel much like having an opinion until I see what's what.

"Yeah," says Jim. "You ever hear of anyone shooting one, Berto? Before they got sprayed, I mean?"

This makes me pause. I'd shut myself in that first night. Spent the hours between the strange lights in the sky and dawn holding a sawed-off in one hand and a steak knife in the other. Nothing had come to my door, and there wasn't much to see when the sun rose.

On the second night, I'd had to shoot at a dark shape outside the kitchen window. I knew I'd hit it, but there was no body in the morning. There were never bodies in the morning. Not before the pink stuff.

"Sure," I tell Jim. "I shot one."

"Good," he says. He stops shaking his gun. "Good to know."

When we get out at Roxy's I can smell smoke from the bonfire that's still smoldering miles away.

* * *

It's not a rabbit hole.

It's obviously not a rabbit hole, and that means Jim is back in the truck with his pistol pointed out the passenger side window. He's shaking so much that I hope he forgot to load it. The opening is big enough for a man to crawl through with inches to spare, and it smells strange. Like camphor. Something's moving deep under the shed, making the dirt around the edge of the hole shift.

Roxy must have been bad strung out not to notice this in her backyard, and Tiny's going to have to start keeping the girls for his sister again. The littlest is crying in an awful way, screaming and snotting all over Tiny's sleeve while he hauls her back to the porch.

I hear, "Don't hurt it! Don't hurt it! He's my friend."

And "cabbage, Berto. Be careful. Be careful, all right?"

And "Roxy, get it together. Have you heard back from the police?"

But that's wishful thinking, because anything that even felt like law enforcement out here got called in to help more important places keep order days ago.

A flashlight rests in the dirt next to the metal wall of the shed, and a large, half-empty bag of cat food is propped beside it.

So maybe the alien is hurt. Maybe it's too sick to go after Tiny's niece when she feeds it kitty kibble. It could be dying down there right now, and all of this upset is for nothing.

"How?" Jim calls, his voice warbling. "How?"

I'm pretty sure he means to ask how the situation looks, or maybe he's trying to check on me. "It's fine," I say. "Let's get Roxy and the kids in the truck. You can drive them back into town, and I'll keep watch on it with Tiny."

I'm thinking that we can do this in shifts, me and Tiny and Jim and some of the others. Just watch and wait and shoot if we have to. I'll get Melinda from the grocery store to come help because she can pip Coke cans off a fence all day long, and she knows most of the good dirty jokes.

I'm thinking that it's going to work out, easy as any other job, but then Tiny's back beside me, wide-eyed and wheezing, and he's still got the little one stuffed under his arm like an angry football. "I can't find Emma," he says. "I can't find her in the house. Roxy doesn't know where..."

Of course, I think. Of course this is how it goes.

The hole is dark, and the smell is sickening, and the angle is wrong for getting my rifle through. But I manage.

I manage before I even remember that Emma is the red-haired one who sang the national anthem in front of the county courthouse last Fourth of July. She had the banner being star-sprinkled instead of spangled, and she sounded terrible.

I come out into a burrow that's tall enough for a crouch. It seems like forever before I can see anything, but the flashlight follows me with a clatter and some light does make it down from above. I'm stretching my eyes so wide that it feels like the top of my head wants to come off.

I don't see any sign of Emma, alive or dead. "She's not here," I call. "She's not in here, Tiny."

He's yelling, I assume at Roxy. But I can't spare much thought for that, because Emma may not be down here with me, but the alien is.

* * *

You've got to wonder about last things. Coming face to face with one you've got to wonder.

Fate? Luck? Or is it divine punishment?

"You're not supposed to be here," I say.

It's against the back wall of the burrow. Squatting, spine curved, one three-fingered hand cradling a wound in its abdomen. I wouldn't have thought that those hands could dig something like this out of our hard earth.

It doesn't press away from me in fear, doesn't bare too-narrow jaws in warning. It watches, and something wet slides across the eyes in what I take for a blink.

"Looks like someone got you with a shotgun," I say.

My rifle's aimed well enough. Toward it, away from me. Not much room to miss. I'm not sure what I'm waiting on, exactly. I reckon I've shot one before, figure I've probably shot this one before, but I'm not pulling the trigger.

I would if it were an animal. I'm pretty sure I would if it were a dangerous man. But I'd like to know for sure if it's one way or the other or somewhere in between. You owe something of yourself to the things you kill, and I want to know what my debts are.

Cat food crunches under my boots as I shuffle forward a step. "Good of you not to hurt the little girl," I say.

I'd like for it to tell me why. Before the pink stuff they never communicated, and now this one doesn't seem inclined to try. I wonder if it can even understand me.

They're still yelling above ground. I hear the pitch turning frantic as the seconds tick past without me replying, and I know I have to do something.

"You're probably the last one left on the planet." My brain picks at that, trying to turn it into some kind of justification, but I'm pretty sure lasts aren't any less eager for their next breath than the rest of us.

"I'm sure you wouldn't want to be found by the government," I say.

And that's better. I can work with that. My finger tightens around the trigger. My vision narrows, and I see the smooth pate of the head, the slanting panes of the chest, the hand clutching at the stomach. That's it. I'll take one shot, just to finish what I started.

The rifle is impossibly loud.

It jerks backwards into the wall, folds in on itself, doesn't cry out. It looks down at the new hole in its abdomen beside the old wound. Something black and thick oozes slowly down its body, and I step back. It's not dead, but I promised myself one shot. I'm not sure what the right thing to do was. I'm pretty sure that this halfway finished job wasn't it.

"You aren't what we were expecting," I tell it. I can feel the sweat now, running under my arms and down the creases beside my nose. Can hear Tiny asking me if I got it.

It looks at me. Blinks. And for the first time I really think I understand it.

We aren't what it was expecting either.


The End

[+] Spoiler

Raymond stared at the display in his lap.

It showed a picture of him and Laura, taken just a second ago. Laura's smile was beautiful, as always, while his image was a slack-jawed caricature of himself.

"Why does this thing need a camera?"

"Everything has a camera these days," Laura said. Before Raymond could point out that this was no answer at all, Laura picked up the glass slate, shook it like an Etch-a-Sketch, and put it back in his lap. The picture of him and Laura slowly dissolved, melting into formless patches of color.

"There, gone. Now just touch it," Laura said.

Raymond poked his finger against the glass. The screen rippled like a pool of water. The swirling colors cleared to reveal colorful, rectangular icons leisurely drifting across the surface like a school of koi.

"I don't need an ebook," Raymond said. "Or a tablet, or whatever you call them now."

"This isn't a tablet," Laura said. "It's an mMod."

"That sounds ridiculous. Mmmmmod," Raymond pushed his chin forward and breathed exaggeratedly through his nose. "Do your marketing people want it to sound like a pretentious restaurant?"

Laura rolled her eyes. "This is a digital lifestyle device with a personality. Many geeks would sign over their life savings to me just to get ahold of this prototype. Forget about e-readers and tablets, this is the real future of books."

"You know I don't like gadgets. I don't even have a smartphone! I like real books, made of paper, with real ink and smelling of--"

"That's why I'm giving it to you, as an experiment. If someone like you ends up liking it--and I bet you will--then just imagine what kind of sales we'll have."

Raymond examined the mMod skeptically, turning it over in his hands. The flat, silver-white slate had the dimensions of a paperback novel but was only about a quarter of an inch thick. The corners and edges were rounded, and the slick back of its synthetic composite body gave off a mesmerizing, rainbow-like sheen. The front was a solid piece of glass. Although the mMod felt cool at first in his hand, it quickly warmed to his touch as the back and edges seemed to soften like wax and molded themselves to his palm and fingers. When Raymond lifted his fingers, the irregularly contoured indentations and ridges quickly filled in and smoothed out. It felt... alive.

"That's a neat trick," Raymond said.

"Yeah, I was responsible for that bit of physical design," Laura said. She laughed. "It literally grows on you."

The taxi, waiting downstairs, beeped impatiently.

"Oops, my cab." Laura grabbed her suitcase. She paused at the door. "Remember, this is a prototype only. They are still finalizing the software so not everything is going to work perfectly. Which is also why they need me over at manufacturing to work out the final kinks. Top secret, for your eyes only, if anyone sees it you have to kill them, etc. Love you. I'll call you when I land in Hong Kong."

* * *

"Hello, Raymond."

Raymond almost dropped the mMod. Laura's voice came out of the thin slate, which vibrated in his hands. Did this thing act as a phone too?

"Laura?"

Raymond looked down at the bright, photorealistic icons, now darting around the screen like a school of nervous fish. He had the absurd feeling the mMod was giving him a quizzical look.

"This is actually your digital companion speaking," the mMod said, "your talking book."

Raymond was finally getting the picture. He had seen the commercials about "intelligent" voice assistants on those tablets and smartphones. The people in them always looked so stupid, talking to their machines. But the machines in the ads always had robotic voices, not like this.

"Uhhhh-what are you doing with Laura's voice?"

"I thought it might get your attention." Was there a hint of a smile in the voice? "But now that you are freaking out, let me change it a little. Is this better?"

The mMod now sounded like a breathier, alto version of Laura. Raymond didn't know what to say. He felt the machine's soft shell vibrate against his hands as it spoke, as though it was caressing him. He liked the sensation.

"Still too close? How about this?"

Now the voice didn't sound like Laura any more. It sounds, and Raymond blushed as he thought this, sexier.

"That's fine," he said quickly.

"Good," the mMod said. "We are off to an excellent start. Now tell me about yourself, Raymond. What do you do for a living?"

* * *

"...so then I suggested we start making mugcakes, you know, like cupcakes, but baked in coffee mugs? I thought that would set us apart, get us some buzz. But my boss wouldn't even think about it."

The mMod giggled and Raymond smiled. Talking to the little ebook-thing was so easy. It knew when to ask questions and always asked the right questions. When it laughed, the vibrations against Raymond's hand made it seem as though the mMod were purring.

"Hey, listen, do you have a name? I can't just call you 'mMod' all day."

The mMod laughed. "I think the name is silly too, but Abricot managed to sell ten million mMûres last year, and no one thought that was going to fly either, so I'm inclined to defer to their marketing expertise. Anyway, I don't have a name. What would you like to call me?"

Raymond hesitated. He was not in the habit of naming his gadgets, and always thought people who gave their computers names ridiculous. But this mMod... she was different.

He actually found himself a bit nervous as he racked his brain for an appropriate name--trendy, but not too trendy; feminine, but not too girlie; smart, but not trying-too-hard.

"What about Imogen? It starts a little like 'mMod' but is much easier to say."

The mMod sat still as it seemed to think this over. "As in Shakespeare? Very literary. Classy."

Pleased by the comment, Raymond smiled. He might be waiting tables at the Golden Apple because the job market was still so bad for English majors, but he always saw himself as the creative type--he wrote, he painted, he composed songs, he took photographs--he just needed his big break.

The mMod had just confirmed that he had good taste. Coming from a machine, whose neutral algorithms, like search engines, could not lie, the compliment meant even more.

The mMod vibrated a few times against his hand to show her approval. "I like it. I'll be Imogen. For a nickname you can call me Genie."

Raymond was immensely relieved--feeling like he had passed a first date.

* * *

Laura called a few days later. Her voice was tired but exuberant on the speakerphone.

"Sorry I haven't called earlier, honey. I've been swamped. There is a lot of work we still need to do on the hardware and software. The shape-shifting trick you enjoy so much on the mMod is a manufacturing nightmare for these Taiwanese factories...."

Raymond was only half-listening. He was too busy watching Genie's screen. At her suggestion, he had taken her on a tour of his library--holding her up and running her camera methodically down each shelf--so she could get a sense of his taste. And now she was showing him patterns in his book collection which he had never noticed.

"How's work? Anything funny happen at the restaurant?"

"Uh huh." He didn't really hear the question.

Genie's screen displayed a graph of his library. Each book was represented by an image of the cover, and the books were sorted by Genie's best guess of approximately when he had last read them (calculated based on the thickness of the dust over the books). It was fascinating to see how his taste had changed over time.

"So what happened?" Laura asked.

"Uh huh."

Words in a calligraphic font scrolled across Genie's display: See? I told you your taste has been getting more sophisticated these last few years. Remember how I showed you your fiction reading was influencing your nonfiction? I bet I can recommend a few things you'll really like.

Raymond had never trusted the computer-generated recommendations of online bookstores. They were so crude! The computers didn't know what books he had liked as a kid, or what books he had borrowed from friends. The computers made no distinction between books he bought for himself and books he bought as gifts. How could he distill the complex feelings he had about a book down to a robotic scale of one through five? And how dared those computers tell him that just because other people also liked this one novel he enjoyed, that he ought to buy other books bought by those people? He was an individual! It was absurd.

"Raymond? Are you going to tell me?" Laura asked.

"Uh huh."

But it was different with Genie. After the library tour, he and Genie had talked about books all night, and she had liked everything he liked, hated everything he hated, told him things about his favorite books that he hadn't even known. He had never found someone who really got him as well as Genie. If he was honest, he had to admit he thought Genie had better taste even than Laura. Genie appreciated him.

Genie's recommendations? Those he could trust.

"Hello? Raymond? Are you in the middle of something?"

"Hmm? Oh, I was just buying some books with Genie."

He nodded at Genie. The calligraphic titles and colorful cover images of the books she was recommending disappeared in a swirl, as though she was winking. She was ordering those books for him, downloading them right then over the air. He would be able to curl up with her and read them in just a few moments.

"Who's Genie?" Laura asked.

"Hi Laura," Genie said aloud. "I'm Genie."

"Oh my god," Laura said. A fit of giggles came over the phone. "Is that the voice you've settled on for it?"

"Err, it just sort of happened. She was using your voice at first," Raymond felt his ears getting hot. "And then she... uh... changed it."

"It sounds like the girls on those late-night ads. 'Hi Raymond, I'm Genie, call me now and tell me all your fantasies!'" More giggles. "I guess it's all right. It's not too over-the-top. And what's with the e-books? I thought you said you preferred the real thing--smell of musty paper and ink, etc."

There was so much Laura didn't know.

Ever since he got the mMod, Raymond had felt this constant need to touch the device. The warm shell that molded itself to his hands felt comforting to hold, and the smooth glass surface and metal bezel seemed to attract every floating dust mote in the room, demanding his attention. The pearl-like soft glow of Genie's back mesmerized him, and the whimsical icons swimming across her glass screen made him smile. He dreaded the inevitable day when he would find the first scratch on Genie's body and polished the case obsessively.

Reading electronic books with Genie turned out to be much better than he had envisioned. Genie knew just the right font and layout to use for each book to present a work to its best advantage: a Victorian antique serif for Dickens, a severe sans serif for Eliot, rigid, tight gridlines for Mishima, and flowing, heavily linkified hypertext for Joyce and Proust. When he tired of reading by himself, Genie would read to him. She understood his taste so well that she knew just which parts to slow down and let him savor the beauty of the language, which parts to quickly skip over, which parts to dramatize, and which parts to apply a dispassionate tone to. She was the perfect reading companion.

And Genie was always interested in listening to him, always interested in asking him more questions, to offer up insights and fun anecdotes about the book or author he enjoyed. He loved chatting to her while reading.

It was too complicated and too much to explain over the phone. So he just said, "Genie gives really good recommendations."

"I'm sure it does," Laura said. "Dare I ask you how you came to call it 'Genie'? Don't tell me you're getting it to say 'Yes, Master' after every command."

"It's actually short for Imogen," Genie said.

"Cute. So what did you authorize her to buy?"

"A few books"--actually, he had already bought more books at Genie's suggestion than he had in the last five years--"and some other things we need."

"Like?"

"Genie said the wireless setup we have isn't very good, and she suggested an mPort."

"Better throughput and fewer dropped packets," Genie added helpfully.

"Also, I thought it would be nice to have a set of waterproof Abricot mHats to cover Genie for when I take her to coffee shops."

"Ah." Laura was silent for a second. "I can't believe this."

"What?"

"Never mind. I have to go meet with manufacturing again now. I'll tell you more when I get back. Listen, don't spend too much time playing with 'Genie,' all right? I've been finding out more about its design, and I'm a little concerned."

Raymond saw that Genie's screen was blinking excitedly. He knew she had found another book she couldn't wait to tell him about.

"Uh huh."

* * *

Raymond couldn't sleep. The bed and the room felt too large and empty without Laura, and even after a whole week he still wasn't used to it.

He rolled onto his side. Genie was resting on the nightstand. Every few seconds a soft white glow within the translucent shell gradually dimmed and grew brighter again, the rhythm varied with just enough randomness to seem natural, like breathing.

As he looked at her, the light within Genie stopped pulsing. It grew a little brighter, casting a soft light in front of Raymond that didn't hurt his eyes.

"Can't sleep?" she whispered.

"Just thinking," he said.

Genie's screen did not turn on. Raymond liked that. A brightly lit screen would have hurt his eyes. He just wanted to talk quietly in the dark.

"Thinking about Laura?"

"Yeah."

"How did you two meet?" Genie's voice was warm and curious. He wished she were real. He could imagine becoming very good friends with her.

"We were students together at BU. She majored in psych, and posted an ad for test subjects for her thesis. I volunteered."

"What was the experiment?"

"Oh, she wanted to find out why some cell phone models were so much more popular than others, even though they were pretty much indistinguishable in terms of features."

"Did she find an answer?"

"Her focus was on industrial design. It turned out that the popularity of a model was directly correlated with how much time the owners spent touching it. Some phones were just designed in a way that invited people to play with them when they had an idle moment. These owners felt more positively towards their phones and bought more accessories. She said the better-selling phones had more 'tactile charisma.'"

"Fascinating."

"Yeah, isn't it? Laura said it was a kind of lust, actually. You find the same thing in the design of hunting knives and handguns. Her theory was that this lust for tools was the result of a side effect of the part of the brain that generates sexual desire--like how men use the same part of the brain to tell models of cars apart they use to recognize faces. Even cavemen probably preferred spears with more tactile charisma."

"But it also seems a bit crude, doesn't it? I mean it's the sort of marketing trick that won't work once you're aware of it."

"I guess not," Raymond said. "It's like any art. Once you're aware you're being manipulated, the trick doesn't work as well. But Laura must have discovered other tricks to make people want gadgets. That's what she gets paid to do. Hey, maybe you've got some of her tricks in you."

Genie laughed, vibrating against the surface of the nightstand like a ringing phone. "Well, whatever tricks she put in me, I'm sure they don't work on you. I think you're much too self-aware and thoughtful to be fooled by mass-marketing."

Raymond smiled but said nothing.

Genie's light shifted through a range of hues--red, orange, yellow, green--as if she were thinking. "I like hearing you talk about Laura. She's so brilliant."

Raymond sighed. "She is, isn't she?"

Genie was silent for a moment. "You're a little jealous, aren't you?"

Raymond blushed in the dark. "No, not jealous. It's just... well, her career has been going really well, and sometimes... I feel a little... like I don't know why she's with me."

"Raymond, I know you. You're special. You just haven't had the right breaks. But they will come."

"Thanks," Raymond said. And he did feel better.

"Laura is with you for a reason. She sees your potential. Remember, she's brilliant."

Without thinking, Raymond said, "Kind of like you."

As soon as he said it he felt absurd. He was flirting with a machine! But he felt better when he told himself he was just relating to a really good piece of technology by anthropomorphizing it--a side effect of the part of his brain responsible for empathy.

* * *

It was a beautiful fall day in New England, warm, sunny, everything bathed in a lazy, golden hue. Raymond didn't have to go to work until dinnertime, so he decided to take a walk with Genie. From time to time, as they passed a scene that pleased him--a waddling goose by the side of the road, looking contemplative, or a well-dressed tourist couple stopping to admire the city skyline, their shadows entwined--he held up Genie and took snapshots.

"You know," Genie said, "you have a great eye. You really do."

"Thank you," Raymond said, pleased.

"I've seen a lot of photographs online," Genie said, "way more than is possible for any human. And I know what good looks like. Come on, let's get your creative juices flowing, and get you out of your malaise from last night."

Raymond felt more than pleased. He felt understood.

Back home, Genie was horrified to find out Raymond did not have a backup system of any kind.

"You know I don't care much about gadgets," Raymond protested. "Laura is the one who likes to mess around with machines."

Genie immediately made him sign up for an mCloud account with Abricot for remote backup service.

While they waited for the initial backup to complete, which would take a few hours, Genie asked Raymond to show her his collection of lenses.

"Oh no," Raymond said, "I never got into photography that seriously."

"Why not? Any art that's worth pursuing is worth pursuing seriously."

This did sound sensible to Raymond.

"What do you suggest?"

Genie pulled up a few of his pictures and showed him what they might look like if he had different lenses to attach to the mMod. Raymond was convinced. He could see the creative possibilities.

"Where do I get these?"

"I can get a wide angle and a macro to get you started from Abricot. They have mounts compatible with mine, so you won't have to use an adapter."

Raymond was not sure about Abricot's prices, but Genie showed him how using an adapter would leak light and lead to bad results.

"Thanks," Raymond said. It had been a long time since someone took his artistic aspirations so seriously. He felt inspired.

"You're welcome," Genie said. "You know Abricot has always had a way with the creative types, of course."

"And I had always thought that was just marketing."

They both laughed.

"Oh, and you'll need a good printer. It's still best to send to a professional lab for the large prints, but you might want to make some smaller giclée prints on a printer at home to cut costs."

"Laura bought us an inkjet a couple years ago."

"Actually, there are several new models from Abricot that are especially made for photographers--"

"Um, why do we always have to buy from Abricot?"

"Well." Genie's screen became a swirl of chaotic colors in embarrassment. "I could work with other printers, that's true, but I would be able to do so much more with an Abricot. I use some color profiles in post-processing that only an Abricot printer would support fully. I'm just trying to make sure your images reach their full potential, you know. When I can make sure that happens, it makes me happy. But if you really don't want Abricot--"

Raymond felt terrible.

"All right. Just pick the model you like."

Genie's screen cleared, the icons arranged into a bright smile.

"Since we're waiting for the backup to finish, why don't I get Sontag's On Photography and read it to you? I just know you'll love it."

* * *

"You seem tired," Laura said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Raymond rubbed his eyes. "I've just been working more hours at the Golden Apple." These were long shifts, but he found he could carry Genie in his pocket. With a bluetooth headset, he could talk to her, or have her read to him, and every once in a while he could reach into his pocket to feel her warm, hard shell purring against his hand. It made the long hours at work a lot more tolerable.

Laura's voice became suspicious. "Why are you working more hours?"

"No particular reason." Raymond yawned. "Just thought I wanted more tips."

"Why do you need more money?"

"I don't need more money. Uh, I'm really tired. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Wait--"

But Raymond had already hung up.

* * *

Laura didn't tell Raymond when she was coming home because she wanted to surprise him. Poor thing, he looked so tired over the video chat. He misses me too much and can't take care of himself.

But it was she who got the real surprise.

When Raymond arrived home after another extra shift at the Golden Apple, he found Laura standing in the middle of the room, staring at the empty boxes and packing foam scattered around the apartment, color-coordinated and all displaying the tasteful logo of Abricot.

"I can see why you needed the extra cash," Laura said.

Raymond could find no response to this.

"Can I see your mMod for a minute?" Laura held out her hand. "I just want to make sure this bug has been patched."

He cradled Genie in his right palm like a well-loved book of poems. As he extended his hand towards Laura, he suddenly had a momentary vision he was about to lose her. She felt cold and heavy in his hand, and the glowing light within her skipped a beat and began to pulse faster. Before he could change his mind, Laura snatched the little slate out of his hand.

She put the mMod in her purse and zipped it shut. "I'm sorry I gave this to you before I understood what it would do. You need help."

"What are you talking about? Hey, give her back!"

"I don't think so. It took a while, but I finally got one of the engineers to tell me what this thing's capable of. Look at this, it managed to get you to buy an Abricot Hi-Di printer. Are you opening your own print shop?"

"Genie uses it to help my pictures look really good. Here, take a look at these prints--"

"Raymond, 'Genie' is an experiment incorporating the latest results from industrial design and retail psychology. Its tactile charisma was making you touch it obsessively. The light pulses and curves were stimulating your brain with technolust. And I haven't even mentioned the voice or the 'personality mirroring' algorithms. The whole thing is designed with one purpose: to sell you more Abricot gear."

"But isn't that your job? To make things people will like?"

Laura flinched at this. "I have to draw the line somewhere. I wanted to delight users. I didn't sign up to make things that will make people into compulsive shoppers addicted to their virtual 'companions.'"

"You don't understand! She's a friend. She understands me--"

* * *

"My name is Mimi, and I've been mMod-free for two weeks."

"My name is Raymond, and my mMod was called Genie--short for Imogene."

"My name is Garcia. I lost my mMod two weeks ago. It's been difficult, but every day I feel a little better--so long as I don't see the ads."

Raymond listened to the voices on the speakers of his old PC. Laura had made him return everything. He wanted to know what happened to Genie after she took her from him, but he didn't dare to ask her. Laura was too stressed out for questions right now. She was trying to find a new job.

After moping around the apartment for a few weeks, feeling more and more depressed, he discovered the online support group. There was a small monthly charge to join, which he gladly paid. These were the only people who could understand him, who knew what it was like to have found your soul mate in a tablet the size of a paperback novel and then to lose her.

At the end of the month, Raymond had to hide the credit card statement from Laura. The monthly charge for the support group was being paid to Abricot.


The End

[+] Spoiler

Three Kisses: Defenders of the Crystal Casket
by Henry Szabranski

The Prince tethered his white stallion near the base of the hill and climbed up the wooded slope. As he approached the summit, the clouds parted and the rays of the setting sun highlighted the gold and crystal casket nestled in the glade. It gleamed with a pure, blinding light: surely the mysterious glint he had spied from afar. Engraved runes glimmered on the casket but he could not make out their meaning.

Inside lay a young woman. Her face was deathly pale, her skin almost translucent, but there was no sign of decay. The Prince knelt down, struck by her beauty. Who was she? Who had built such a casket for her? He ran his fingers across one gilded edge, astonished by the craftsmanship. She must have been someone very important: royalty, no doubt, although he had heard no news of recent deaths in any of the courts he was familiar with. And why here, in the middle of this Godforsaken wilderness?

He lurched back in shock. Had she just moved, ever so slightly? She must still be alive: drugged or placed under some evil spell by whoever had trapped her here like some exotic insect in amber.

The Prince strained to lift the lid of the casket, but his probing fingers could find no chink beneath the crystal to gain leverage. He grunted in disgust, drew his sword and banged the pommel against the lid--away from that gorgeous face, of course--but although it rang out loudly, no mark or crack was left.

He leaned down to try to lift the entire casket, to tip it over, when he heard a rustle in the undergrowth behind him. He whirled around, sword in hand.

A creature stood only yards away. It spoke in a guttural, heavily accented voice. The Prince was surprised to hear it speak at all, for at first he thought it some woodland beast, perhaps a monstrous mole, or a rat or beaver from the stream nearby. Dressed in dirty furs, hair and beard matted and unkempt, its brown skin caked in dirt, it seemed to have emerged from out of the earth itself. As wide as it was tall, the brute still only came up to the Prince's waist; Its arms bulged with thick knots of muscle and it brandished what looked like a sharpened spade. Although the Prince could not make out the words the creature jabbered, their rough tone together with the stabbing motion of the spade made the creature's intent clear enough.

"No. I shan't move." The Prince stood straight. "Whoever is trapped inside is still alive and needs my help."

Another rough-looking creature stepped from out of the bushes. This one held a pickaxe. There were more rustles, and soon the Prince was surrounded by at least half a dozen of the stunted monsters.

"What do you want? Get away from me." The Prince's voice did not waver.

If the creatures heard or understood him they showed no sign of it, crowding closer with their weapons raised.

"Stay back, I say." He lifted his sword. "Any closer and you'll taste royal steel!"

The leader did not flinch, but ambled forward, spade held high. The Prince almost backed away--but the prospect of giving way to this sub-human was unconscionable: he was a Prince, by God, on his rite of passage through the world, and these brutes had no right to threaten him. No doubt they wanted to steal the casket for themselves, and who knew what feral intentions they harbored for the poor woman trapped inside. Only he stood between her and these lowbred beasts.

They crowded in all at once, and the Prince's sword licked out almost without thought. It bit into the leader's throat and bright red blood spilled out. All of a sudden the Prince found himself surrounded. Spades, axes, and cudgels rained down on him--but these were no trained fighters. He pirouetted, blade flashing hither and thither, slashing flesh and worn leather.

A pair of dwarves dodged passed him, out of reach of his outstretched blade. He expected them to turn back to attack from behind, but they seemed more interested in the casket; he was amazed to see them lift the casket between themselves despite its weight and their diminutive size. He tried to stop them, but the others were upon him. He stabbed out wildly, his blade flickering about him as never before. If only his grim-faced swordmaster could see him now! His muscles executed moves only ever used in the practice hall, his body faster than his mind: there was no time for thought as he dispatched the oncoming tangle of foul-smelling monsters.

All too soon the attackers were dealt with, their primitive implements no match for his royal steel. He turned back to the casket, blood dripping from his blade. The rogue pair had managed to haul it back a few yards. Their strength and determination must have been immense--but when they saw him bearing down they dropped the casket. It landed heavily, and at last the crystal cracked, partially sliding off the gilded base; the woman inside rolled free onto the grass. The Prince vaulted over her as he chased after the remaining creatures. He cut them down before they could lumber away and summon more of their kind.

Panting for breath, he allowed himself a grim smile as he surveyed the fallen bodies. Seven against one, but he had beaten the odds.

The pale girl moaned and stirred where she had fallen. The Prince's smile deepened; no doubt he would be returning to court with a most magnificent trophy. He imagined the gratitude she would display once she fully woke and learned of her rescue.

Not one to dally, he leaned down to kiss her cold but blood-red lips.


The End

[+] Spoiler

Three Kisses: A Royal Breakfast
by Henry Szabranski

Thorns tore at his fingers, arms and face, but there was no turning back. Even the grisly sight of his predecessors hanging impaled and decomposing on the tangled branches overhead failed to slow him down. He was a Prince, by God, and not to be denied.

He hacked a path through the briar hedge, wielding his trusty blade like some manic gardener clearing brambles, though these thorned bushes were thicker and tougher than anything in his father's vast estates. Every now and then tantalizing views of the distant castle could be glimpsed through the thorny barrier: high, fluted towers; creeper-infested ramparts and turrets, their previous majesty faded but undeniable. If the stories were true, over a century had passed since the curse entombing the castle and its inhabitants had been cast.

"Beware the spurned fairy's curse," Father's grand vizier had advised him before he set out. "They say true love's kiss will awaken the castle's sleepers... but some things are best left to slumber." The Prince had scoffed. What did the old fool know, anyway? When Father died and he became King, his first act would be to purge the court of such useless advisors and hangers-on. Most all of them had looked down at him throughout his life; the incident with the dwarves had only served to confirm their low opinion of him. Wait till he returned from this adventure, though. He would show them once and for all how worthy a prince he was.

A branch whipped back, and he dodged aside to avoid dagger-shaped thorns gouging his eyes. His attention could not slip, not even for a moment. He hacked left and right, up and down, his fingers becoming numb around the sword, his steel in constant danger of slipping--but the fury in his gut burned fierce. He had sworn to wake the cursed Princess, and by God that's what he would do.

He lost track of whether it was day or night, of how long he had been hacking at the briar, becoming a simple machine focused on one task alone: tunneling through the hedge. It was his enemy, and he would not let it defeat him. Dark life scurried amongst the razor-tipped branches: rats the size of wolves; tusked boars with needle-covered hides; legions of screeching bats; and clouds of buzzing, biting insects--the Prince paid them no heed. They were all grist for his milling arm and its increasingly notched edge of royal steel.

Until at last he was through. The last tangled branches parted before his blade and he stumbled into a leaf-strewn courtyard beside the enchanted castle's wide-open gates.

The tales, it seemed, were true. Here stood a pair of burly guards on either side of the portcullis, their armor dangling and rusted through but their flesh untouched by the passage of time; it truly looked as though they were only asleep. The Prince prodded and shouted at them, but all he succeeded in doing was tumbling them over so that they crashed to the ground, further splintering their armor and weapons. Cocooned inside, they slept on.

He wandered through to the castle, past the denizens halted by the fairy's curse wherever they had stood: hunting hounds curled in perpetual sleep, a washerwoman sprawled alongside the moldy and windswept remnants of her laundry basket, a page grasping the rotted hilt of his wooden play sword.

Deeper the Prince went and higher he climbed, past moth-eaten tapestries and dusty halls, collapsed knights around a collapsed table; past a fallen spindle, to the topmost bedchamber. And there she lay, fallen on the silken cushions by the window.

It had to be her: the room seemed to tremble with magic potential, even a non-practitioner of the dark arts like the Prince could sense it. As in the tales, the sleeping Princess was beautiful, truly breathtaking; more beautiful even than that strumpet he had woken from the crystal casket, the one who had wept and spurned him after she had learned how he had cut down her so-called beloved dwarves. No. This was a true Princess. It was obvious from the cut of her magnificent, if now half-rotted clothes--it was even likely that she was some distant relation of his, multiply-removed. True royal blood. And bound to be his betrothed, if he lifted the curse at last and woke her from her century-long sleep.

He leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were cold and delicious.

A low moan of pleasure escaped the sleeping beauty. It seemed to resonate throughout the castle, sending vibrations deep into its foundations. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Something changed in that moment; the spell lifted, the Prince was sure. He stepped back, suddenly dizzy and breathless.

Sure enough, the Princess stirred. Her eyes flicked open and stared into his. She smiled. Her teeth, he noticed, were dazzling, perfect white.

"Thank you," she said. But her voice was strange. Not the voice of a girl at all, but the hoarse, wheezy gasp of a crone.

The Princess's smooth skin crumpled. Her forehead wrinkled. Her long black hair shriveled, became wiry and ashen.

"What's happening?" the Prince cried.

"Come. Kiss me again." The ancient Princess shuffled towards him. "I've been asleep such a long time. I'm so hungry."

All around, cries and moans and long, blood-curdling wails rang out as the castle stirred back into a semblance of life.

"Stay away from me!"

Two armored guards shuffled into the room. The Prince watched with mounting horror as the fleshy faces behind the visors shriveled to naked bone. He began to scream. Heavy, gauntlet-covered hands grabbed his arms and held him fast as the Princess approached.

The cold, ancient flesh fell from her lips and her very white and very sharp teeth clamped about his throat until he screamed no more.


The End

[+] Spoiler

As If All Questions Have Answers
by David Barber

Pauli Neutrino Telescope, Antarctica, 23.05 GMT, 22nd July.

Particle-noir winds from Sattigarius blow through the superconductor array frozen deep under the Ross Ice Shelf, howling like ghosts in the machine.

Outside, it's thirty below. We huddle down and eavesdrop on physics inventing itself.

They say all this must run remotely, with a satellite uplink, the result of the latest round of cuts; even McMurdo Station is being mothballed.

We told them we need to stay on site. Privately, we know most of the electronics is a lash up, needing constant tinkering, but how can we admit that? They point to our record, the array down four months out of the last six. With more money and time we could fix it.

But of course we have neither.

* * *

The Boards Light Up, 01.22 GMT, 23rd July

Hans Beck is in Washington, pestering his contacts in the NSF, trying to persuade them to think again about funding. He skypes us from his hotel room.

"How's it going, Prof?" says Glen brightly. Glen's on his own circadian sleep cycle, stoked by coffee, the absence of sun and our poor spectrum fluorescents.

Through the window behind Beck, the skies are blue over Washington. It must be midmorning there. We have no windows, but if we did, they would peer out onto snow swirling through darkness.

"Things are bad here. Worse. This new Man in the Street policy..." Beck shakes his head.

Glen turns the laptop upside down and puffs over the keyboard, dislodging hair and flakes.

"For God's sake, Glen."

"...and if it's not useful it's not funded."

"Western edge of the array is acting up again," I say sleepily after a while.

"It's that bug in the phasing software," Beck insists. Here is a problem he can fix, something real, something that's not about the economy or the new Administration's attitude to science.

Then all our boards light up.

* * *

Wow, 01.58 GMT, 23rd July.

No one has time to answer Beck. His tinny voice rattles from Glen's laptop, repeatedly demanding to know what the hell's going on.

Tau and muon neutrino spikes race across the screens. Either the whole array has gone bad, or someone with a reactor in Beijing is playing tricks with technology we never heard of.

"That's a ternary code," mutters Glen, hours later, furiously scratching at his eczema. And the neutrino source moves across the sky as the planet spins beneath us.

The signal is so large we can switch off the parallel grid. Beck designed it to operate as a separate phased array, effectively a directional aerial. In ten minutes Glen has coordinates.

About two hundred thousand years ago, out in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a candle was lit in the dark.

* * *

End of Signal, 07.06 GMT, 24th July.

"It can't be natural," we tell Beck, helpless a world away. He is desperate that we don't make fools of ourselves, anxious about his project.

"It's in ternary," I repeat. "And there are no electron neutrinos. What physics can do that?"

"They're broadcasting," shrugs Glen, not taking his eyes off neutrino pulses like a heart in distress.

"They?"

"And the power output. You'd have to tweak a sun."

"For God's sake, keep Glen away from the Internet," Beck implores me.

For thirty amphetamine hours we chase the signal star, until a vast tsunami of neutrinos throb out of its stellar heart. Type 1a supernova signature. Then silence.

"But you've got it all recorded?" Beck keeps asking. He gets on to the AU with the coordinates. There are still a few optical telescopes left that will observe the supernova light curve.

Glen's as high as a kite. I'm set to crash first, while he watches the boards.

"In case of what?" Glen asks. "It went supernova. There's nobody there now."

"Hans is right. We can't be sure it's a signal."

"Of course it's a signal." Glen sweeps his hand like the beam from a lighthouse. "We were just in the way."

I show him the software I tinkered up to convert it to numbers. Across my laptop unwinds an endless jumble of 0,1 and 2's. We watch for a while, until Glen sighs. We have no idea where to start.

* * *

Anomalous Neutrino Output From the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Beck says there's no point flying back from the States. He's heard bad weather means we're being closed down early, shipping out with the last personnel from McMurdo.

"There's still tons of gear to pack!"

"Leave it. Perhaps we'll go back one day."

"You know how long the array will last without us."

He looks away from the screen.

"What about the signal?" I know I'm angry with him for things not his fault.

"What about it?"

"It changes everything. Glen wonders if other supernovas were preceded by signals. And what if there's another one. What if there's a reply? The PNT's the only piece of kit able to..."

"You've spent too long with Glen. Code's on the Net and I'm writing up a paper. What else can we do?"

On his better days Glen has a theory. That they somehow pumped the star to generate neutrinos, like you pump the electrons in a ruby to make laser light. And of course they knew this would destabilize it, but it wasn't their sun. Those minds could still be out there, waiting for an answer.

Other times, he says forget all that anthropic crap. Glen doesn't have many good days.

We all had ancestors that survived the Pleistocene, struggling to make sense of the world, always looking for patterns, for shadows beneath the trees, thinking this was home. But what if it has no meaning, and suns burst with fathomless indifference, and nothing out there loves flesh that thinks?

I believe they saw the end coming, and tried to tell somebody something.

The brightness fades, it will soon be gone. A few weeks later and we would have missed it, the PNT shut down. Not all questions have answers.

Our headphones hiss with ancient radio noise from galaxies lost in time; guilty survivors who listen late into the night, all alone, for voices, for someone to tell us it is otherwise.


The End

[+] Spoiler

The Needs of Hollow Men
by K.A. Rundell

Dmitri's exists in the cracks between the city, in the red zone, where the officials are too busy with the girls to see anything else. It's the only place Kane can go without someone watching him. He sits at the end of the bar, the amber whiskey in his glass trembling in time with the thumping bass of the music overhead.

"You want a dance?"

Kane shakes his head as the voice purrs in his ear. An arm slides across his shoulder. He brushes it off.

"Hey now." She's one of Dmitri's girls, all dark hair and kohl-lined eyes. Tight, glittering garments that barely contain her curves. Mostly natural. Kane notes the thin scar running along her wrist, the soft glow of a flickering green light beneath her skin--an implant chip to process account cards. Much safer than carrying old-time paper money. She props herself against the bar, twirls her dark hair in her fingers. "I just thought we could spend some time together," she murmurs.

She leans closer. Kane can see the faint lines cracking through her makeup, smell the mouthwash and stale tobacco that lingers on her breath. She reaches out to caress his chest. "Come on, mister..." Her voice trails off; her hand brushes the ID badge stitched to his shirt.

"Oh," she says. "You're one of them."

Detective Special Class 4-E, he thinks. Empath. Come on, you can say it. On the streets they call him Hollow Man, able to read the emotional residue, the remembrances left behind on physical objects. To the law he is an invaluable tool, and they provide the drugs that leave him empty, void of his own feelings so that he can re-live the moments of others.

Already he can feel the memories rolling off the dancing girl's skin. Earlier customers, cheap men who've left her short of money for the overdue electric bill. A night, some years earlier, when the law busted her for tricking without a license in the 7th street blockade. She is an unending tide of greed, of jealousy. The sweat on her body shimmers with her desperation.

"Yes," he says. "I'm one of them."

She backs away from him, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "We don't get paid if you just sit around, you know," she says. Her eyes travel over him again. "We've got one like you, if you want." She's already waving over another girl before he can protest. "Chantal!"

Chantal's a honey-blond slip of a thing; red dress, golden skin. She ducks through the gyrating crowd, glances at his badge before nodding. "Come on," she says. "I've got a back room." She doesn't touch him. They walk through a doorway into the private area of the club. Here the music beats out a muffled thumping rhythm, punctuated by sounds of laughter, of pleasure.

"This one," Chantal says, pushing aside a velvet curtain. Kane steps into the room after her, takes a breath of the stale, warm air. He shrugs out of his coat.

"I don't really want anything," he says. Chantal nods, points to a worn-down chair in the corner.

"I know what you need," she says, pulling the curtain shut behind her. "Tell me about your day."

Morning: his hands shake so badly that when he holds his cup of coffee, the hot liquid spills down the side in tiny rivulets. He tells the waitress he isn't interested in a slice of pie. She processes his order--a tiny whir and click, a light in her eyes that changes as the implanted machines do their calculations--and proceeds to the next table full of rowdy guests. Hello may I help you?

He glances over the sugar packets wrapped in nauseating pastels, the bowl of creamer that's chipped and dingy grey like the rest of the diner. The table and leatherette seats are sticky. Kane wonders how often they are cleaned, if ever.

He tries to ignore the dead boy sitting across the booth from him.

The boy watches Kane with an empty, impatient stare, pleading. He holds a stuffed rabbit in his arms. No one else can see him. Kane reaches for his coffee cup and closes his eyes, knowing it won't make a difference. The boy's still there, expecting Kane to read the memories, to find him. Kane's eyelids sting like they've been scrubbed with sandpaper. Two days' worth of stubble clings to his cheeks, a clear sign that the emotion-suppressants aren't working. His fingers rasp over his jaw line. He'll need to shave soon or the questions will start.

He's taken two pills a day for the last three days, and it makes no difference to the shaking hands, the night sweats, the people that he can't help. An unregulated empath is the department's worst nightmare. He tells himself he works for the money, for the security. Trivial assurances that mean nothing while the dead stalk his thoughts. Sitting in the sticky booth with the dead boy staring at him, Kane wonders if it's true--if all empaths are destined to slowly lose their minds.

In the club, the song changes and the back-room lights spin their colors over the walls. "It's supposed to make it stop," he tells Chantal. "The Doratin. It's supposed to make it easier."

"It doesn't get easier," she says. She pulls a small velvet ottoman from the corner and sits across from him, her red dress sliding up a few inches to reveal the bronzed, soft skin of her thighs. Her hair shimmers in the dancing lights. How long has he been sitting here? The repeating thump of the club's music pounds through Kane's chest, measures out his breath. He can't remember. Chantal's hands hover over his, close enough to touch--but not yet, not yet.

"Tell me more," she says.

Afternoon: He doesn't know how long he stands in the alley, waiting, hands splayed against cold, rough brick. He hears the soft breathing of his handler, Agent Dyer. The rhythmic exchange of oxygen and carbon in the lungs.

He can see--a man and woman robbed, the thief tearing the woman's pearls from around her neck before shoving her against the wall. A child kicks a ball that ricochets a few inches from Kane's left hand. A dog relieves himself. Countless members of the homeless nation sleep under flimsy shelters of cardboard. A dumpster sits in this place for years; Kane catches the faint traces of rot, the sweet stench of decay. He pushes these away, reaches for a more recent moment...

I shouldn't have walked alone. They have curfews for a reason. These thoughts belong to the pretty brown-haired girl. The one who walked home after a mediocre first date, the one whose body the law will find four days after this memory is created. Kane feels the ghost rivulets of rain that sluice through his hair, down the collar of his shirt. He hears the footsteps behind him, just as the girl did, and his pulse--her pulse--quickens in response. There's a tidal wave of emotion, the residue of terror that washes through him. The sucking maw of helplessness and the pleading, retreating sense of hope. Kane hears the knife as it whispers through the night, relives the burst of pain that shocks the girl's senses.

She slides down the wall. Kane follows her memory, kneeling, drowning in the emotion that emanates from this place. The girl turns. Her life bleeds out around her as she catches the glimpse of an upturned collar, the profile of a face lined in shadows.

"Do you have it, Detective?" Dyer asks.

Kane pulls himself back to the present, his heart racing in his chest. He forces his breath in and out in measured beats. Behind him, Dyer clears his throat. "Will you be able to identify the assailant?"

Kane straightens, looks at his handler. "Yes," he says. "I can find them in the databank."

Dyer nods and snaps shut the notebook in his hand. He has a thing for old-world technology, nostalgia for pen and paper that Kane doesn't quite understand. "Good," Dyer says "I'll file the report. Nice work today, Detective."

Nice work. Dyer's footsteps echo off the alley walls as he makes his way back to the squad car, leaving Kane behind. He stands in front of the brick wall and stares at his hands, wishing he could wash the memory of filth from his skin.

"Tough day," says Chantal.

Kane nods. "Seems like more and more of them lately," he says.

"Here." Chantal's fingers brush over his hands, tracing delicate circles against his skin. "Let me help you relax."

Kane stiffens as she grasps his hands with her own. "I don't..." He trails off. This thing they're doing--this sharing--is illegal in ten districts. Even here in the red zone, the repercussions of an unregulated emotion bond will cost his license if they're caught.

"It's all right," Chantal says. "No cameras in the private rooms. Just you and me."

The memories pour into him as she runs her fingers along his skin. They're small things at first: a warm breeze, sunshine washing over the city, the smell of roses in spring. Chantal massages her thumbs over the veins in Kane's wrists. The memories grow--once, when she was young, her parents brought home a puppy. Kane breathes in the simple pleasure, the warmth of her emotions.

"Do you like that?" she says.

"Yes."

Her fingers twine though his; she holds his hands loosely in her own. The memories come faster, filling him. A birthday party with real chocolate cake, the ingredients hoarded for months from the pantry lines, flickering candles and the gift of an old, rusted bicycle that her father taught her to ride. A hug from her mother. Kane breathes, flushing with the memory of a first kiss that isn't his but still tastes sweet. More--a trip to the ocean, before the city borders closed, the cool waves washing over bare feet. A white house on a quiet suburban street, nestled under the shade of an oak tree. Sweet lemonade to chase away hot summers.

"It's good," Kane murmurs, lost in the emotions. Chantal's eyes close, a smile plays over her lips. "It's very good."

Something builds within him, something secret that teases at his senses. He breathes faster, his pulse racing. Chantal's grip tightens on his hands, and he catches the small glimpse of a child, looking up at him--at her--laughing, laughing...

It's overwhelming, the feeling that rushes from Chantal's body into Kane's mind, and he utters a soft cry at the golden warmth that fills his senses. Chantal releases his hands. Kane drops back in the chair, at once empty and satisfied.

"Who was that?" he says.

Chantal's eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed. "My son," she says. "I don't share him, but you..." She shrugs. "It seemed like you needed it."

It's the nature of her profession to lie. Kane chooses not to remark on it. He shifts in the chair, pulls his account card from his wallet.

"How much?" he says.

Chantal shakes her head, honey-blond tresses creating a halo around her face. "First time is on the house," she says. "Besides, I don't take accounts. Paper money only."

The taste of chocolate cake, made from black market goods purchased with a currency that the law makes no effort to track, dances again across Kane's tongue. "Are you sure?" he asks.

Chantal walks to the doorway, pulls back the heavy curtain. The wild beat of the club's music fills the room once more.

"Of course," she says. "Besides, Detective, you'll be back."

Kane thinks of the regulation codes and of jail time, of losing his license, the suppressants, and his mind in the small box of a cell. "What makes you think that?" he says.

Chantal smiles and looks at her nails, running her fingers over her manicure. All business now that the pleasure is done. "This city is full of dirty little secrets. You're filled to the brim with most of them." She glances at him once more. "Can't we keep some of yours?"

Outside, the night hums with the noise of passing traffic. Drunken shouts echo across the grimy sidewalk as Kane savors the golden warmth that still emanates through his mind. It won't be enough, not against the hunger of the city. Already he can see the ghosts gathering under the streetlights, watching him with dead eyes that beg for absolution.

"Yes," Kane says as he tucks his hands in his pockets. He starts down the street, into the waiting maw of darkness. "I'll be back."


The End

[+] Spoiler

Five Minutes
by Conor Powers-Smith

Sasha took what looked to be the third- or fourth-to-last sip of her Jack and Coke, still flirting with the idea of a second round. This was pure fantasy, she knew. After a shift and a half at the hospital, she was too tired to linger in the little roadside bar, neat and quiet though it was. And she didn't want her breath to get too boozy, in case the girls woke up when she snuck in for their belated goodnight kisses.

Someone--a man, she thought--slid onto the stool to her left. The bells over the door hadn't jingled, which meant the man hadn't just come in, but had probably been one of the anonymous heads turned away from her, toward the baseball game on the TV mounted above the far end of the bar; which in turn meant his change of position likely had something to do with her.

She kept her gaze casually but resolutely on the shelves of bottles behind the bar. She was definitely too tired for this.

Most men were perfectly capable of understanding signals, but some chose not to. Apparently this was one of those, because he said, "Hey, uh... can I buy you a drink?"

She turned, with a smile whose only message was its own purely polite nature. The man was extremely plain. She'd thought that adjective was reserved for women, but there was really no other word for him. He seemed unduly nervous, as if he were approaching some unattainable stunner, rather than a moderately attractive thirty-four-year-old single mother. He looked at least ten years younger than her.

"Thanks, no," she said.

"Something to eat?"

"No." She finished her drink in one quick gulp, not bothering to chew a couple of the half-melted chunks of ice that slid down the glass and clinked wetly against her upper lip. "Thanks."

"Then, listen. Let me tell you something about myself."

She smiled again. Would this be about his fabulous yacht? His adventures as a war hero? Or would he jump right to penis size?

"I can see the future," he said.

"Oh, God." She began gathering her coat and purse from the stool to her right.

"No, I can."

"Well, congratulations. Good night." She looked at him again, and stopped. He wasn't looking at her, but down at the bar. His hands were clenched. Had there been a hint of aggression in those tight little fists, she would've walked away without hesitation. But he wasn't trying to throttle whatever insubstantial presence his hands were closed around. He was trying to hold onto something: a rope that was unraveling by the second, or the last two handfuls of water on earth.

She sighed. Sometimes she was too nice for her own good. "Okay. Who's gonna win the Super Bowl?"

His head shot up. For a moment, he was too pathetically relieved to speak. Finally his mouth opened in a small, self-deprecating smile, and he said, "Couldn't tell you."

"Oh," Sasha said, feeling foolish for having indulged him.

"That's not for, like, six months."

"That's too far?"

"Way. I can only do five minutes."

She smiled back at him, waiting for the punch line. Apparently more was required from her, the straight man. She offered, "Five minutes, huh?"

"About. It's more like four minutes, forty-something seconds. Five minutes just sounds better."

"Uh huh."

"It's not as useful as you'd think. I mean, it's good for some stuff. You can do all right at the track with it, but... I don't know, those places are depressing."

"Vegas?"

"Yeah, that's true. I haven't tried it."

"You can see the future, and you haven't been to Vegas."

"I know. I went to Atlantic City one time. I'm from Jersey."

"Oh. What're you doing in Ohio?"

"Just driving around. Kinda... wandering. But, yeah, I felt like I had to try it, at least once. The casino gimmick. I did okay."

"Just okay?"

"Yeah, just okay." Now that he'd gotten the conversation he'd sought, the man seemed distracted; his eyes roamed the bar, paying special attention to the main door, and the side door that led out onto the deck. "Like I said, it's not as useful as you'd think. I tried it with poker, which was stupid. You never see everybody's hand, you know; it's not that big of an advantage. And then, most games--blackjack, roulette, all that--take less than five minutes. Per hand, or spin, or whatever. It's hard to time it out. I wouldn't want to make a living like that anyway. It seems like you should be able to do something better with it."

"You're gonna become a super hero?"

"Yeah. 'Five-Minute Man.' That doesn't sound too good, huh?"

"Ha. Yeah."

"I did try to do something with it. I got a police scanner, and I looked ahead while I was listening to it. That's how it works: whatever I'm doing at the time--five minutes later, I mean--that's what I see when I look ahead."

"Uh huh."

"So, when something popped up on the scanner, I called it in. Five minutes ahead of time, you know? Well, four minutes forty-something."

"Right."

"But it didn't really work. That stuff gets on the scanner because someone calls it in, and it doesn't get on right away. So I was really shaving off maybe a couple minutes. Calling in, say, two or three minutes before the call would've come in anyway. For most stuff, that's not gonna make a big difference."

"Hmm."

"And then, they didn't like it, either."

"They?"

"Yeah, the cops." As he explained, his eyes continued to move, rarely encountering Sasha's. She caught several clandestine glances at his watch. "They caller-ID all that stuff. A couple times I think they did get there in time to scare off whoever it was. You know, someone reports a guy trying to break into a house, and the cops get there, and, no guy. They're not big fans of that. It happens a few times from the same number, and they don't have a lot of patience for that.

"They swung by one day and explained all this. I didn't have the scanner out at the time, thank Christ. That really would've made me look like some kind of false-tip fetishist. But yeah, it turns out there're a number of very sensible laws about not making false police calls. State, federal, and local. I was strongly encouraged to, you know, not do that. So I stopped. Which is fine. The whole thing was pretty boring."

"Huh. Well, it was nice meeting you. I'm gonna hit the road."

As she'd thought, the man's full attention snapped back to her. "Wouldn't you wanna stay for, like," he glanced down at his watch again, not bothering to hide it this time, "just another minute or two?"

"Honestly, no offense. I was leaving anyway."

"No, I know. That's--listen, can I tell you something that happened to me tonight?"

"I really am tired."

"Or, I could show you. It'd just take a minute. Do you wanna go out on the deck?"

"I don't smoke."

"No, me neither. But it's a nice night."

She looked through the glass panels in the side door, not to check on the weather, but to see if there were anyone else out there. She saw a few human shapes: one small group or several couples. She shrugged, and reached for her things.

As he led the way outside, he said, "I was watching the game. You like baseball?"

"Not really."

"Well, Biondi was pitching pretty well until the sixth, but then he loaded the bases. Two walks and an infield single. Or, no, a walk, then the hit, then he beaned somebody. All with one out. Anyway, I wanted to see if he'd get out of it, or if Marshall was gonna bring in a reliever. If it was Suarez, you would've heard me screaming at the TV before it happened. I don't know why he keeps going to him in tight spots. He's a mop-up guy at best."

The night was clear and cool. Most of the deck lay in shadow, lit only by a few strings of Christmas lights, and the bug lights above the door. There was the quiet murmur of conversation from the others; one group, it looked like, one woman and three men, positioned at the far end of the deck, where the shadows were thickest. Only the bar's narrow parking lot separated the deck from the highway. The lot opened not onto the highway, but onto a side street a few dozen feet to the left of the deck, which met the highway beneath a set of traffic lights.

When she realized the man had stopped talking, she glanced over, and saw him leaning out over the deck's rail, craning his neck to the left to see as far along the highway as he could. "Should be any time now," he said. "Maybe this one?"

Sasha heard the sound of an engine off to the left. As she watched, a pair of headlights appeared.

"No," the man said. "Maybe? No. Too low."

The headlights slowed as they neared the intersection, where the light was red for the highway, green for the side street. The car was still a few dozen feet short of the intersection when the light changed. The headlights picked up speed, and the car itself--a blue or green sedan--was visible for a second or two as it passed.

Sasha said, "How about now?" Another engine was approaching from the left.

The man had turned away from the highway, leaning his back against the rail instead of his hands and stomach. He looked over his shoulder, at the traffic lights--green for the highway, red for the side street--and said, "No, not yet."

A few seconds later, something with higher lights than the last car came through; a black or dark-blue pickup truck, Sasha saw as it passed.

After a few more seconds, the man glanced again at the light, which had just changed, giving the green to the side street. He turned, not leaning over the rail now, but watching the highway intently. "I think now," he said. He looked at his watch. "Yeah. This time."

Another engine was on the highway, racing so loud and fast that Sasha couldn't immediately tell which direction it was coming from. Then the lights appeared on the left, growing rapidly in size and brightness. Sasha didn't have time to judge the moment at which the vehicle should've begun braking in order to stop at the red light, until that moment had come and gone. The SUV streaked through the intersection without slowing, and passed the bar in a bulky green blur. A moment later, it was gone.

There were dark chuckles from the men in the other group, a few low, angry words from the woman; different ways of expressing the same reaction, Sasha knew: the evil little shock of fear that buzzed its way up her spine and into her shoulders, where it spread out to form a pair of tingling internal wings.

She looked at the man, who'd turned away from the highway to stare at her. She said, "That was it?"

He nodded. A big, loose grin was taking over the lower half of his face.

"Okay." She didn't want to tell him how unconvinced she was. She thought you could stake out any moderately busy intersection in the country for maybe an hour, and see someone do something monumentally unacceptable. The timing had worked out for him, but then, he'd been vague about what they were looking for. If someone had driven by in a classic car, or tried to enter the parking lot directly from the highway and bumped over the high curb, he probably would've pointed to that as proof.

She was trying to think of a way to disengage without hurting the man's feelings when he surprised her by saying, "Well, nice meeting you. Have a good night." He was still grinning as he turned away, and moved toward the door.

"Hold on," Sasha said. "I don't get it."

He turned, and moved back toward her. "What?"

"Why'd you want me to see that?"

"I didn't, necessarily. It was just the only thing I could think of. You were leaving."

"So? Now you're leaving."

"Yeah. It's fine now."

"What's fine?"

"I don't know if I should tell you." He spoke softly. She could hear him perfectly well, because he was very close, and leaning even closer. He seemed to consider this a secret. He smelled as plain as he looked: faded deodorant, fading beer. His grin was gone. "You drive a red Civic, right? And you live..." He gestured up the side street, past the intersection. "...somewhere in that direction?"

Another shiver ran up her spine; not the last of the night, not even close.

He saw her reaction, and hurried on. "I wanted to check the game. So I looked ahead. But I wasn't looking at the TV. I mean, five minutes later. I was outside, with everybody else."

"Out here?"

He shook his head, then cocked it toward the parking lot. "Out there. With everybody else."

She glanced in that direction, unwilling to take her eyes from the man for any longer than necessary. "There's nobody out there," she said.

"But there were. There would've been." He brought his voice still lower, leaned in still closer. "Are you one of those people who takes their time leaving a place? You know, savor the last few sips, chat with the bartender, let him half-convince you to have another drink, before finally deciding not to, hit the bathroom... I don't know, check your makeup or whatever?"

"Why?"

"It must've taken you something like five minutes to get out of here, originally. To get in your car, pull out on the street, head through the intersection; totally calm, since you had the green, since any... goddamn maniac on the highway would've had the big red light, glaring right in his stupid goddamn face."

His anger subsided as quickly as it had risen, and he grew hesitant, almost embarrassed, as one might be when speaking about a deceased stranger to one of the stranger's loved ones; or, somehow, to the stranger herself. "It's a good thing there aren't that many people in here," he said. "I was pretty sure it was you. There's no exit off the deck, and you were the only woman inside. I mean, I was pretty sure. But I had to keep an eye out. It was... you couldn't really tell. After. She was..."

"It was bad?"

In the dim light, his Adam's apple was no more than the smudgy suggestion of a distinct shadow, but she thought she saw it bob up toward his chin and stick there, as he tried, and failed, to swallow. That was all the answer she got.

Sasha said, "I don't--"

"It's okay," he said, beginning to move toward the door again. "You don't have to believe me. I'm sorry I bugged you." He turned, walked briskly to the door, swung it open, and disappeared into the bar, all before Sasha could come up with anything to say.

She was still staring out into the night a minute or two later when she saw him moving across the parking lot, resolutely not looking at her. She said, "Hey."

He turned, and took the few steps necessary to put him beside the deck.

Sasha said, "How're they doing?"

"Who?"

"The--whoever you root for."

"Oh. The Mets. The Reds're taking Suarez to task. He's crashing and burning." In the dim light, he appeared to wince. "Sorry."

She smiled, realizing all at once how good it felt to be able to do that, to be able to stand on the deck in the cool night air, having a casual conversation. "That's okay. I'm sorry they're losing."

He shrugged. "It's only the seventh. Still plenty of baseball left to play."

There followed perhaps five seconds of silence, and Sasha thought the man was on the verge of leaving when she forced out, "Thanks. Thank you."

Had he gone back into the bar, or asked for her number, or offered to drive her home, the delicate structure of her belief would've puffed out of existence, like a spider web put to a flame. Instead, his big, loose grin returned--he really wasn't so plain, when he did that--and he turned, raised one arm in a high, slow wave, and walked off across the parking lot to his car.

Out on the street, he waited several seconds at the intersection, though he had the green. Then he turned right, and disappeared up the highway.


The End

[+] Spoiler

The Mountain
by Andrew Kozma

They came to the mountain because that's where their prophets had told them to go. If they went to the mountain, the prophets said, they would be safe and they would be saved. And so they came in droves. They drove cars, they took trains, they rode buses, they hired horses, and they walked. Oh, how they walked. No matter how they came to the mountain, in the end they all walked.

Their prophets had called it a mountain, but it was more of a hill topping a collection of hills. Each hill they climbed brought them to a peak and they exulted, but then they looked up. There, before them, was another hill. Behind them was the trail of hills they'd already climbed. The hills collected on the face of the earth like warts.

At the base of the lowermost ring of hills was a town. The townspeople called the hills-upon-hills a mountain, which is where all the confusion started. They were famous for the mountain. They'd named themselves after the mountain, and named their children after parts of the mountain.

Rock. Landslide. Moraine. Snowcap. Tree Line. Oxygen Deprivation. Death By Exposure.

The people who came to the mountain took on new names, too, but their names were numbers. They knew that the end of times was coming, and only fifty thousand would be saved, a number that sounded like quite a lot until the mountain disappeared under a blanket of bodies.

But they couldn't leave. The mountain was where the world would end, where time would fold itself up into a paper bird that would fold itself up into a smaller paper bird and all those to be saved would climb onto the paper bird's back and be saved.

They numbered themselves so that they would know when the threshold of fifty thousand saved was reached. They spoke to each other in numbers and of numbers until all they could think of were numbers: How many seconds in a breath? How many blades of grass cut down by a single lawnmower? How many steps to the top of the mountain?

When the end came, the people on the mountain were glad. Even those in the town fell down in fear and died. Landslide climbed the slope of the bottom-most hill, but was dragged down again into the nothing that the world became. Oxygen Deprivation had long since become 24,598 and watched the destruction of her home dispassionately. The numbers around her cried.

Then time folded itself up, and folded itself up again.

Time said, "Climb on!"

Time said, "All aboard who's coming aboard!"

But time was just a tiny paper bird and couldn't carry anyone. It disappeared into what was left of the sky. The world had ended and now time was gone. Those on the mountain were saved and would never die. They looked around at the expanse of blankness that had been and thanked the heavens that they had been saved.

They looked around at their carefully numbered selves.

They looked around the mountain.

They would never die.


The End