Tick-Tock

Xia Jia, translated by Emily Jin

Him

Alone in the darkness, he counts the tick-tocks.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty seconds in a minute.

His thumb slides from the tip of his index finger to the second knuckle.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty minutes in an hour.

He clears the counting on his left hand and carries a digit over to his right hand.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

Ring-a-ring.

The alarm clock bleeps, waking him up from the darkness.

The wind blows at the curtains, letting in the sunshine. It’s a new day.

He rolls out of bed, washes his face, brushes his teeth, makes coffee, slides a toast into the toaster, fries an egg, eats breakfast, changes into a business suit, puts on a tie, goes downstairs, starts the car engine, and leaves for work.

It’s a bright, breezy day. A few puffy, white clouds are drifting across the clear, blue sky, the sight so beautiful that it almost looks like a cartoon image. He skims through his day schedule as he drives. There’s more work to do today than he had imagined.

Lately, he’s been overloaded with work. But his love for his job is enough to push him through.

He parks his car next to a school, opens his trunk, finds the box labeled “1” and takes out the costume and props inside.

The costume is a school uniform. He puts it on, half-tucks his shirt into his pants, steps into a pair of grubby sneakers, ruffles his hair into a bed head, and sprays toner onto his face to moisturize the skin.

A smooth face, bushy eyebrows, and clear eyes: the perfect schoolboy package. Satisfied with the reflection in the rearview mirror, he does a few warm-up moves on the curb to stretch out his arms and legs. He can smell the fragrance of osmanthus flowers in the cool morning air.

All set. He gives himself a clap of encouragement.

Ready, action!

He races toward the school.

Going to be late for school, better hurry up . . . faster . . . he thinks. He gasps for air as he runs. His hair and unzipped sweater whip in the wind. The soles of his shoes are burning. He swings his arms frantically as if the extra motion could speed him up. Faster, faster . . .

Bam!

He runs smack into someone as he turns a corner. He stumbles, then falls to the ground, sprawling.

Ouch. He has hit his head so hard that he’s seeing stars. The world seems to be spinning before his eyes. He lies there, unable to get up.

“Ah!” a girl’s voice rings above his head.

He looks up. He sees a pair of white sneakers, and then the hemline of a school uniform skirt.

A girl with short hair is kneeling next to him. Eyes wide in surprise, she examines him carefully. The morning sun shines on her face, illuminating the tiny freckles on the sides of her nose.

“Are you alright?” asks the girl.

Something hot is running down his chin. He realizes that his nose is bleeding.

Cut.

He sits up. Wiping his nose on his shirt, he evaluates the previous act. Was it natural enough? Was it too dramatic? Did he fall down correctly? What would an inexperienced high school boy do when he falls in love for the first time? Verisimilitude doesn’t matter; what matters is whether his performance could stir up the feeling of young, innocent love in an adult audience. Generating empathy is the key to a successful performance.

“Are you alright?” the girl asks again, her voice timid.

She is so young, he thinks, this is what a real high school student is supposed to look like. He can never fake the look of youth no matter how good his acting or how flawless his makeup. As he gazes at the girl’s face bathed in sunlight, he feels the bittersweetness of a first crush slowly rising in his heart.

Let’s redo it. He decides.

He rewinds the scene. The bloodstain on his shirt disappears, the girl returns to the other side of the road, and he appears back at his car.

He checks the rearview mirror again to fix his makeup and costume, warms up and gives himself another encouraging clap.

Ready, action!

Once again, he dashes toward the school.

Bam!

Cut.

The second performance is definitely better. Satisfied, he grins to himself.

It’s getting late. He heads off to the next scene, leaving the school behind.

The clouds are thinning. The sun, now brighter, casts the shadow of trees onto the road.

He parks his car in an underground lot and takes out the box labeled “2” from his trunk. The costume this time is a close-fitting gray uniform, looking rather futuristic. He tightens the belt, puts on a badge and slicks his hair back.

He enters an elevator. As the elevator ascends, he rehearses his lines silently.

The elevator gate opens. He walks out and strides onto the bridge, his head held high. The crew salutes him.

“Captain, the wrap drive is ready.” His first mate calls out to him.

“Forward!” he orders, with a wave of the hand.

You

In the darkness, you count the tick-tocks alone.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty seconds in a minute.

Your thumb slides from the tip of your index finger to the second knuckle.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty minutes in an hour.

You clear the counting on your left hand and carry a digit over to your right hand.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

Ring-a-ring.

The alarm clock bleeps, waking you up from the darkness.

You turn on the light in your windowless, messy room. It’s a new day.

You pour yourself a cup of cold water, drink it in one gulp, go to the bathroom to shower, dry up with a towel, change into clean clothes, make instant coffee, grab a sandwich from the fridge, and sit down at your desk.

You browse your inbox and your day schedule. There’s a lot to do. Better tackle these tasks one by one, you sigh.

First of all, you create a new project: a high school romance. No need to build a new scene—you can use an existing template. Most shows about high school romance are largely identical, even the schools on the sets look pretty much the same. You display the miniaturized 3-D model of the school and the neighborhood on your dashboard. You change some of the shop signs and add a few cars and pedestrians to the scene. You adjust the lighting and the color, and use a filter to make the sky seem bluer and clearer. You set the time to September. With a final dash of cool morning breeze and the fragrance of osmanthus flowers, the scene is good to go.

Next you design the female protagonist. Height, weight, measurements, outfit, hairstyle, facial features . . . you give her a pixie cut, tanned skin, some light brown freckles and lean, muscular legs like a deer. She resembles a girl whom you’ve had a crush on in the past.

You know for sure that the male protagonist will fall in love with her, because he is you, and you are him. You created him. Or, rather, you created an avatar of yourself in a virtual world. He feels and thinks exactly the way you do. With him as the protagonist, you spin thousands of stories. Through him, the consumers can immerse themselves in your stories. He becomes their eyes and ears.

Other characters in the scene, however, are merely NPCs (non-person character) generated by 3-D modeling and algorithms. They can cry, laugh, sing, and dance, but nothing beyond those simple actions. The protagonist is the only RPC (real-person character) who can react genuinely to each scene, like a real living human.

He appears at the crossroad and changes his costume and hairstyle in accordance to the scene. You take the chance to adjust his statistics. Enhance speed, dexterity, and flexibility. After all, the upcoming scene involves a little more physical activity than usual.

Since an RPC is based on a real human, you cannot change their character setting like you can do to the NPCs, or else the RPC will experience identity confusion. You have to create an ultimate role for him that overrides all those alternative characters, like an umbrella: you make him believe that he is an enthusiastic actor, and playing those characters is only a part of his daily job.

Humans have mastered the skill of reducing cognitive dissonance. Even an RPC in a virtual world will rationalize everything around them and generate a self-consistent life story. The same thing goes for dreams. When we dream, no matter how strange the dream, our brains always make it feel real.

Does a virtual character dream? Occasionally you wonder.

What would someone living in a dream, dream of? You don’t really know. You, on the other hand, haven’t dreamed in a long time.

All set. You put a finger on the “start” button.

Ready, action!

EXT. IN FRONT OF THE SCHOOL — EARLY MORNING

He races toward the school.

(Going to be late for school, better hurry up . . . faster, faster . . . )

Bam!

He runs smack into the female protagonist who is also running towards the school, as he turns a corner. He stumbles, then falls to the ground, sprawling.

(Ouch.)

A girl’s voice:

Ah!

He looks up. He sees a pair of white sneakers, and then the hemline of a school uniform skirt.

A girl with short hair is examining him carefully, her eyes wide in surprise. The morning sun shines on her face.

The girl:

Are you alright?

Something hot is running down his chin. He realizes that his nose is bleeding.

You press the “pause” button.

Was it natural enough? Was it too dramatic? Did he fall down correctly? The key to a successful product is whether it can make the audience empathize with the protagonist. Even if the story is fictional, the emotional experience needs to be genuine.

Maybe he thinks this scene could be done better, too. He is you and you are him. Often times you can feel what he’s feeling.

Let’s redo it.

You click on the progress bar and drag it back to the starting point, resetting the scene. Again, you put your finger on the “start” button.

Ready, action!

I

The alarm clock bleeps, waking me up from the darkness.

The light brightens slowly, illuminating my sleeping pod. The pod is so cramped that I barely fit. I lie there, ruminating on the dream I had last night. It was vivid, rich, colorful, exciting, and indeed emotional, in which I lived a hundred different lives: I was a detective, running around the city to track the traces left behind by the criminal mastermind; I was the daring and intelligent captain of a spaceship, ready to lead my crew into space for a grand adventure; I was a handsome ranger, roaming all over the land to seek romantic encounters; I was brought back to the time when I was a schoolboy having a crush for the first time, and my heart sped up whenever I passed by her homeroom . . .

Every alternate dream is a life that I long for, yet could never have. In reality, I am only an ordinary man living a mundane life in a big city, an average worker bee that strictly follows the rules and always plays it safe. In dreams, however, I get to do whatever I want. I can spend millions overnight and rule the world like a king. I can be anyone and go anywhere, no longer confined to my tiny work cubicle or even my physical body.

The screen in front of me lights up. A familiar tune plays as the advertisement comes on:

Dream Worker

Dream your dreams!

A woman’s voice whispers in my ear. “Good morning! Did you have a good dream last night?”

Two options, “yes” and “no,” appear on the screen. I choose “yes.” A payment-processing page emerges.

“Do you wish to proceed with the payment?”

The second I pay for last night’s dream, my account balance drops immediately. Dreams are expensive. As if I was dragged back into the cold reality all of a sudden by those numbers, I feel gloom slowly overwhelming the good mood from the dream.

“Thank you. Hope you have a happy day!”

It’s time to wake up, go to work, and make money to pay for tonight’s dream.

The brain perceives time differently in a dream. Ten minutes of rapid eye movement sleep can become decades in the dreamworld, which means, I could experience a lifetime of power and wealth in a single night as long as I can afford to keep dreaming.

With dreams, who cares about life during the day, then? It doesn’t matter if your work is boring, if you’ve accomplished nothing, if you’re poor, inferior, lonely, or desperate. These troubles will soon pass. You only need to stick it out and wait patiently for the night to come again. What is repressed during the day will return to you when night arrives.

On all fours and facing backwards, I crawl out of the hexagonal sleeping pod, and follow my neighbors through the narrow corridor. The room consists of many walls that line up like bookshelves in a library. On each wall there are over three hundred sleeping pods installed, and in each pod lives someone just like me. There are countless numbers of rooms in the entire building. Similar to bees in a giant hive, we struggle to make a living through the day and return here at night for a dose of fantasy.

Our era runs on dreams, just like how our past generation ran on coal and oil.

I hear a strange sound in the corridor ahead. I halt, just in time to see the crowd splitting apart to make a path. Two men wrapped in white from head to toe are gliding towards our direction like two phantoms. They crawl into one of the sleeping pods and soon crawl out again, dragging a dead body behind.

I recognize that pod as my neighboring pod. I don’t know the person who died, though, and I’ve never seen them around. When did they die? Last night? The thought of sleeping next to a dead body sends a shiver down my spine.

“I have to say that it’s actually kind of nice to die when you’re high on a dream,” a mutter comes from the crowd.

“Well, someone’s overdosed!” Another person snickers.

I have seen people who died in their dream before. Most of them looked strangely ecstatic. A dream is like a mirror that reflects your desires. People who don’t know when to draw the line will continue lusting for more highs like drug addicts, until they drown in the abyss of their own desire.

The men in white put the body in a bag. As they zip up the bag, I catch a glimpse of the corpse. She seems already in her mid-age, black-haired and skinny. Her eyes are closed shut and her face is scrunched up, so I can’t really tell what she looked like before she died. The expression on her face, however, is indescribable. It’s not simply happiness, pain, or fear. In fact, she doesn’t even look human anymore.

Although it was only a quick glance, I find the scene before my eyes utterly unforgettable. Perhaps her face will haunt me forever.

I’ll be having nightmares, I think as I continue to follow the crowd through the corridor. Happy dreams get boring sometimes; an occasional nightmare can help spice things up a little bit.

I can’t help but look forward to tonight.

Us

The lights in the cinema gradually dims. The rich, sweet smell of butter popcorn permeates the air. When I reach for the popcorn, my fingertip accidentally brushes past another, smaller hand. All of a sudden, I feel a numbness rising from my feet and quickly traveling up, running through my body like an electric shock. It’s the feeling of first love, I recognize, and I haven’t felt it in a long time.

The hand withdraws soundlessly. I peer at the girl next to me. She immediately turns her head away, pretending that she hasn’t been looking at me. In the half-dark room, I can vaguely distinguish the small freckles on the sides of her nose. Right now, we’re on our first date.

I know that this is a dream, because cinemas don’t exist in the real world anymore; yet I still let myself loose to immerse in this character and enjoy the moment.

I muster up the courage to reach for her hand. She tries to pull away at first out of shyness, but after a moment of hesitation, she lets me take her hand. I feel her palm beneath my palm, curling up like a little bird. Encouraged, I hold her hand a little tighter.

Take it slowly, I remind myself, a game is only fun when you play it step-by-step.

The dark movie screen flashes, and then a title text in white emerges:

The Secret Behind the Dream Factory!

What is this? A movie trailer?

Before I can figure it out, the film already begins to play.

Close up on the tranquil face of a sleeping man.

Narrator:

Every night, when you crawl into bed, you are ready to leave the hassles of the day behind and enter the fantastical dreamworld brought to you by Dream Worker. However, do you know how your dreams are created?

TV advertisements, posters, videos of product launch events, the confident beam on the face of the technical director . . . everything is all too familiar.

Advertisement:

Dream your dreams!

Narrator:

Dream Worker provides customized dreams to every user. It can satisfy any wish: owning a harem or killing people like ants, becoming a superhero or a billionaire . . . you may think that your deepest desire is only a fleeting thought or a tiny part of your daydream, but Dream Worker can make it come alive and give you the most vivid immersive experience.

A compilation of video clips with each scene flashing by:

Romance, history, fantasy, war, horror, erotica . . .

The protagonist, however, is always the same person: the sleeping man in the beginning.

Narrator:

Dream Worker claims that they collect data of the users’ browse history, purchase history, social media updates, books they’ve read, movies they’ve watched and music they’ve listened to, deduce each user’s taste, preference, and desires with an algorithm, and create customized dreams out of existing story templates.

For example, a user obsessed with James Bond would dream of going on a special mission at a vacation resort that they’ve wanted to visit recently. At the same time, food, cars, and fashion that they’ve seen in advertisements and their celebrity crushes will appear in the dream as well.

Their algorithm is a magic box that generates dreams automatically. There is no risk of leaking private information, because no one else besides you can see what is in your dreams.

An animation display:

Elements of a user’s daily life—eating, drinking, traveling, working—are recorded on cards, and those cards are thrown into a black box. The box then produces a colorful movie poster with the user’s face in the middle, surrounded by the elements on the cards.

Narrator:

However, this is not how the dream factory works in real life.

In the dream-generating black box, a person slaves away every day to polish the little details of your dream. That person knows your loves and hates, your fears and hopes, your joys and worries. They know how to please you.

They are you.

The screen turns black. A spot of light shines in the middle of the darkness. The camera descends slowly from above, gradually closing up on a myriad of cubicles bathed in light. In every cubicle there is a worker in blue-gray uniform diligently creating dreams. The camera shifts downwards again and locks its focus on one of the workers.

The glow of his dashboard illuminates his face. He’s the same man from before.

Narrator:

Dream Worker collects your data and creates an avatar—maybe thousands of avatars—of you in virtual worlds. They are the workers of your personal dream factory.

However, they believe that they are human just like you, and creating dreams is only their job. When you go to sleep at night, they wake up and go to work, producing spectacular dreams for their only audience, you.

The camera zooms in and focuses on the dashboard. It displays a battlefield. All of a sudden, a white horse leaps and lands in the middle of the enemy’s troops like a flash of lightening. With a slash of the sword, the hero on the horse beheads the enemy captain. The camera moves in for a low-angle shot fixed on the hero’s face. The camera zooms out again. Behind the small silhouette of the protagonist emerges an enormous projection of the dream creator’s expressionless face.

The protagonist and the dream creator share the same face, yet they never look at one another.

Narrator:

Despite that the system makes these workers believe that they are just like real people, they don’t actually need to eat or sleep. In fact, even if they tried, they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. Every morning when you wake up, they will be thrown into a space of darkness and freeze there, unable to speak or move. All they can do is calculate the passing of time by counting seconds, and wait for the moment when you go to sleep again.

As the creator of dreams, they never dream.

The screen darkens again. Nothing is audible besides the ticking sounds of a clock.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

What the hell?

I stare at the screen, confused. Was that an advertisement? Or was it just something I made up in my dream? Dreams, of course, are always a little absurd; but what I saw was way too real.

I remember a joke that I’ve heard a lot: there’s a house-elf in every smart device that helps us make phone calls, pop popcorn, order takeout food, manage money, drive, clean our room, predict the weather, record our life . . . of course, it’s only a joke. As technology continues to develop, machines are gradually replacing human labor. Or, rather, humans are beginning to feel that their work is not so different from the work machines do. Big data and AI algorithms, in particular, are blurring the boundaries between humans and machines.

I squeeze the girl’s hand again. She’s a few lines of code, a 3-D visual, a character in the dream; yet she feels real. I can love her the way I love a real human. No—even real humans can’t touch my heart the way that she can.

“Exactly! Who can say that what you’re feeling is not true love?” A voice rings next to me.

I turn my head to see that the girl is gone, and a stranger is sitting on her seat. I am holding his hand tightly.

“Did you forget who I am?” The man looks at me. “Think carefully.”

I study his face. There is nothing unordinary about his features.

All of a sudden, I remember: he is the man from the trailer I saw just now, the character I play every day in my dream.

He is me.

How strange. I have not realized until this moment. It’s always hard to remember who we truly are in a dream.

Horrified, I want to shake his hand off, but I can’t. Our two hands seem to have grown into one.

The man chuckles. “Do you like the dream I made for you?”

His laughter sends a chill down my spine. His eyes, deep and dark like abysses, make me tremble with fear. The gaze of the other.

The man who has created all my dreams is here to seek revenge. He hates me, because I own what he cannot have; I know, if I were him, I would hate myself, too. Everyday when I wake up, he is imprisoned in the darkness, waiting for his turn to move while wallowing in despair and hatred. Now, he has found a bug in the system that allows him to come out, and he’s here to get me.

What is repressed during the day will return to you when night arrives.

“Are you scared?” The man chuckles again. “Why are you scared of yourself, then?”

I don’t know what he wants to do to me. All I know is that as the creator of this dream, he has a thousand ways to kill me. I fumble desperately in the darkness.

No, this is my dream, and I’m the one and only protagonist, I think to myself. A protagonist doesn’t die. I must survive until the moment I can wake up.

My fingertips feel something hard and cold in the popcorn basket. I grab it.

“Don’t be scared,” the man tightens his grip, “Here, follow me, I’ll show you what the sun looks like outside.”

I whip out a loaded gun from the popcorn basket, press it to his forehead, and pull the trigger, firing shots one after another, until the entire clip is empty.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

I smell gunpowder and blood.

I sit there gasping for air, my chest heaving. My heart is racing fast. It’s dark all around. There is no one else in the audience, no witnesses and no one to scream out in horror for what I’ve just done.

In utter silence, all I can hear are the tick-tocks of the clock.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

I bend down and fumble for the dead body of the person whom I killed, but my fingertips feel nothing but thin air.

Everything has vanished. I am left alone in the infinite darkness.

I yell, I run, I fall down, I tumble, I stumble, I strike, I scream, I curse, I sob, I plead . . .

Nothing happens.

No sound, no light, no ending to the darkness, no exit.

I lie down and curl into a fetal position. I can’t tell how much time has ticked past.

Perhaps this is only a joke, or a temporary bug in the system. Perhaps after a few more hours I will be able to leave this place and wake up in the cramped, warm cabin.

I remember the woman who died this morning. The way she was dragged out from the sleeping pod, her stiff, cold body, and the indescribable look on her face.

I’ve heard that the human brain perceives time differently in a dream, where a night can feel like eternity.

To distract myself, I begin to count.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty seconds in a minute.

My thumb slides from the tip of my index finger to the second knuckle.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

There are sixty minutes in an hour.

I clear the counting on my left hand and carry a digit over to my right hand.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

Originally published in Chinese and English in SFComet, 2015.
The is a new translation of the original Chinese version.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

Xia Jia (aka Wang Yao) is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Xi'an Jiaotong University and has been publishing speculative fiction since college. She is a seven-time winner of the Galaxy Award, China’s most prestigious science fiction award and has published three science fiction collections (in Chinese): The Demon-Enslaving Flask (2012), A Time Beyond Your Reach (2017), and Xi'an City Is Falling Down (2018). Her first English language short story collection, A Summer Beyond Your Reach, will be the first book published by Clarkesworld Books. She’s also engaged in other science fiction related works, including academic research, translation, screenwriting, and teaching creative writing.

Move Forward, Disappear, Transcend

A. T. Greenblatt

I lost my favorite fingers as I was walking to the library. Spotting it first from the corner of my eye, I glanced down. A gasp seized up in my throat. Instead of the long, beautiful, expertly manicured prosthetics that Sonya made me, there were ten empty nubs. And the grief I’d been carrying these last few months grew heavier.

I scanned the tall reeds around me, hoping that maybe I simply dropped them. But it was pointless. It was impossible to find anything in this city anymore. Downtown was more like a wilderness preserve than the vibrant cityscape I knew as a girl. The buildings were covered in ferns, and wildflowers grew where the roads use to be. My allergies would have been terrible if I still had sinus cavities.

There are a few advantages to being so old that you’re mostly clone parts or inorganic replicas. A ship of Theseus of the flesh.

I stared at my incomplete hands, fighting back the tight sob in my chest. In a moment of weakness and I tapped the side of my temples with my knuckles and messaged Frida. “I’ve lost my fingers.” I blinked and took a snap of my hands, palms up, and sent that too.

“The ones with the indigo manicure? Are you sure you didn’t leave them at home, Mom?” she messaged back.

Of course I was sure. I would never so carelessly lose something my second wife made me. But I wasn’t going to risk an argument about it. Of my many children, Frida was the only one who still responded to my messages.

I took a few deep, steadying breaths. I was far too old to get emotional in the middle of the street. Instead, I smoothed my hair with my palms and looked ahead. Because there was nothing else to do, but keep moving forward. That was what I always told my children.

I continued on towards the library.

When I arrived, the librarian at the desk was wearing a transcended body that made him look like a model from an Andy Warhol painting. Unlike me, his body was completely synthetic.

“Hello Lin Pei,” I said, hiding my hands behind me, the nubs of my missing fingers sharp against the small of my back. “How are you today?”

“Hi Ms. Y,” he said, brightly, “Studio room 4 is all set. The students are eager to meet you.”

“Wonderful.” My apartment was too old to support a personal VR room. Thank goodness for libraries.

Lin Pei moved like a dancer as he led me to an empty studio and booted the school’s program for me. A few seconds later, the studio became a perfect replica of a 2030s apartment. Nothing like my real apartment, of course. Mine didn’t have so much clutter and my taste in deco was much less . . . old fashioned. I always disliked the scene design of this program. It made me feel like an alien in my own history. But I didn’t have the heart to tell that to the program managers. They were so excited to have me as part of their living history project.

I took a seat in the middle of the living room, carefully tucking my fingerless hands in my pockets.

Two minutes later, my audience appeared. The kids sat on the couches and chairs and floor, facing me. I guessed they were about eight years old. Some of them seemed interested in their surroundings, some looked wrapped up in the feeds in their heads. I had to resist shaking my head. Children didn’t know how to multitask anymore.

The boy closest to me had bright red, curly hair and I was tempted to reach out and tousle it. But that would have been ridiculous. I was the only non-projected thing in the studio.

I put on my brightest smile.

“Hello, everyone. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?”

They introduced themselves as Oakwood Primary’s fourth year students from Melbourne. I gave my little opening speech: Who I was, how old, what my life was like way back when, what it is like now, what it was like to be one of the first people to ever transcend.

“You don’t look like you’ve transcended.”

“No,” I agreed. “Because I transcend so long ago, I don’t have the right tech installed to be completely relocated.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does it mean?” I had asked, as my children and I sat in the doctor’s office when they first mentioned replacing my failing lungs with inorganic replicates.

“It means you’re going to be around for a very long time, Mom,” Frida said, squeezing my hand.

“It means I was upgraded in pieces,” I explained. “And that I’m not completely synthetic, even now.”

The kids looked impressed.

“So that’s why you have wrinkles?”

“Yes and don’t I look fabulous?” I replied, tossing my hair back and striking a pose. The kids giggled and I smiled. It amused me that I was an ancient relic to them even though physically, I hadn’t aged since I turned sixty-five.

“Did you know,” I said. “That before we had comm implants up here,” I almost tapped the side of my temple, but remembered my missing fingers at the last moment. I tilted my head instead. “That we sent messages with something called a phone.”

The kids giggled again. “Ms. Y you said ‘message’! It’s called a dash!”

“Gran, you’ve got to keep up with the new tech,” my grandkids said, laughing, but I could tell they were worried. They were in their seventies, but wearing transcended bodies that looked thirty. “We don’t want you to get left behind.”

“I’m trying, dears. Really.”

“We know, Gran.”

“Oops,” I said, smiling through my embarrassment.

“Can you tell us more about what it was like when you were younger, Ms. Y?” the teacher said, with a sympathetic expression.

Silently, I thanked the teacher and took the opportunity to steer the conversation into familiar territory. I told them about what gaming on a console was like, how we had to travel to visit places because we didn’t have comm implants or realistic VR yet. I explained that if you wanted to eat, you had to make your own food or have someone else make it for you.

They stared at me in a mixture of horror and disbelief.

“But why didn’t you just print it?”

“Because back then, printers could only make things in plastic and metal,” I replied. “We actually had to practice to make good food.”

“The future is so much better, then.”

“You can’t go,” I told Sonya, clutching her hands in the hospital, as her original organs and the new clones failed and died indiscriminately. “The future will be worth living for.”

“I’m sorry, love. But I think it’s just my time.”

“The future is better,” I agreed, out of habit. But in that moment, the grief I’d been carrying for the last three months, ever since I snuck a look at Frida’s personal messages, put its cold hand on my chest and squeezed. Until recently, I really did believe that the future was brighter.

“We have to go soon. Any last questions for Ms. Y?” the teacher said.

“Aren’t you sad you can’t transcend beyond your body? What if you’re the only person left one day?” the boy with the red, curly hair asked.

“How can you just abandon your body?” I demanded, when Ru, my third and last husband, broke the news that he was transcending. Really transcending. “We promised we’d always be here for each other. What about me?”

“I’m sorry, dear. Nothing personal. I just want to see my grandkids—and great grandkids—again.”

“Leo!” The teacher reddens with embarrassment.

“Oh, that’s alright,” I said, turning to the boy. “No, I’m not worried. If I’ve learned something over the years, it’s that I’ll always have things to care about right here.”

I tried to smile, but the feeling of the nubs of my fingers against my thighs, made it impossible. And as I sat there among the children, this fresh generation, the memory of sifting through Frida’s personal stream of messages three months ago, haunted me.

It was like a mother spying on her teenage daughter, even though we were both far too old for that. I still felt guilty about it, but Frida had grown distant. My daughter, my last relative that hadn’t upgraded beyond my capabilities yet. The only one I could still see and communicate with.

In her message stream, I found four different information packets about “Taking the Next Step!” Guides about transcending beyond the physical body.

I knew then, that one day soon, my daughter would disappear too.

Every year, Frida throws a fabulous party for our birthdays. Mine’s only four days after hers, so a joint celebration is something we’d been doing for decades. She always offered to host and I’m always happy to let her take charge.

I was embarrassingly late to the party, but my brown eyes went missing that afternoon. The latest piece of me to disappear.

They hadn’t been my favorite, but they were the closest to what my original eyes had been and recently, I found myself using them almost daily. After an hour of frantic searching, I gave up and agonized over which pair to wear instead. Many of my other pairs were noticeable and bright, something I used to delight in, but now they felt like they belonged to a different person. Or another life. In the end, I chose to wear my green ones with hazel flecks to the party. These eyes were lucky, I told myself; I’d been wearing these eyes when I met my last husband, Ru.

By the time I arrived, there were about two dozen transcended bodies in Frida’s apartment. Her home was tastefully retro, favoring the shiny surfaces and severe lines style of the early 22nd century. Most of Frida’s friends and lovers were nouveau-retro too, looking like they stepped off the set of a 2120s stream. All loose fitting, flowing clothes and short cuts, curls close to their scalps. There were fewer people in attendance this year than last, though. An unsettling trend in last decade. Once, Frida’s parties spilled over with guests.

“Happy birthday, Mom!”

I turned, and there was my daughter. She looked nothing like when I last saw her, choosing mods that made her body curvy, complete with an A-line haircut and dimpled cheeks. But I could recognize that smile, the way she moved her hands, on anything she wore.

“Happy birthday, yourself,” I replied. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I was getting worried.”

“I sent you a message.”

Frida laughed. “No one’s called them messages in decades, Mom. It’s dashes, now.”

I smiled. “I know, but I’m a stubborn antique.”

“Not to me.” She took my hand. “Come on, let’s go mingle.”

Frida’s friends were polite, as always. Asking about my work with the living history project and my health. Those were safe topics. Most people knew that modern tech and organic material weren’t compatible, so I couldn’t get the upgrades I needed to follow the latest feeds. In many ways, the guests reminded me of the school children I talked with. Conversations felt more like an interview and everyone seemed so . . . well, young.

When the talk turned, as it always did, to who among their acquaintances were transcending next, I excused myself to the kitchen, claiming to need some water.

I didn’t, but this was the only room empty room in the apartment. The kitchen was a relic of another time, no longer required. Like me. I looked at my hands, relieved that my second favorite fingers were still there, but then, grief threatened to overwhelm me and I had to steady myself on the edge of the counter.

Today, my youngest daughter turned one hundred and sixty seven. On Wednesday, I would be two hundred and fourteen. And of my numerous friends, lovers, family, and descendants over my extended life, she was the only one left with a physical body. The rest had disappeared to places I couldn’t reach.

“You okay, Mom?” Frida stood in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the threshold.

I stood up straight and smoothed my hair. “You always worry about me.”

“Of course. I don’t want to lose you, Mom.”

“Even when you transcend beyond a body?”

Frida bit her lip, for a moment looking guilty and so much like the child she once was. “How did you know?”

“A mother’s instinct.”

She settled herself next to me by the kitchen counter, staring through the doorway at her friends in the other room. “It’s getting harder,” she said.

“Yes.”

We were silent for a few minutes, watching the guests in their beautifully crafted bodies that would never gain muscle, change shape, or get wrinkles. No one could move forward in this state.

“I think,” I said, slowly, through the grief, the ache in my chest. “I think this should be our last birthday party.”

“What do you—” Frida began. Then she realized and her eyes widened. “Oh. I can’t just leave you, Mom.”

“When was the last time you talked to your children? Your grandchildren? Great-grandchildren?”

“I have some great-great-greats that are still too young to transition,” Her eyes glisten. “But it’s not really the same, is it?”

I shook my head. “You should reconnect with them.” I said. “Before they become unrecognizable.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine. They’re starting communities for us first transcenders, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’ll be fine.” I said again and gave her my most reassuring smile.

It was a lie, of course. My eyes, fingers, and a dozen other pieces of me had disappeared these last three months and I had no idea why. Perhaps, my memory, which had served me well for over two centuries, was overfull and leaking information. But, maybe like Sonya, it was just my time to go.

I don’t tell Frida any of this. Instead, I reached out and pulled her into a tight embrace. A moment later, I felt her arms wrap around me too.

My daughter and I held each other in her small, useless kitchen. Neither of us willing to end the moment first.

“To many happy returns, love,” I said.

“Like you always say, Mom, let’s keep moving forward.”

“Yes.” I squeezed her tightly one last time and then let go.

About the Author

A.T. Greenblatt is a mechanical engineer by day and a writer by night. She lives in Philadelphia where she’s known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. She is a graduate of Viable Paradise XVI and Clarion West 2017. Her work has been nominated for a Nebula Award, has been in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, and has appeared in Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fireside, as well as other fine publications. You can find her Twitter at @AtGreenblatt.

Empress in Glass

Cory Skerry

The train tracks slashed across the wetlands like a stitched wound, and to Meneja, the sun’s red light pooling on the marsh looked like congealing blood.

“We’ll be there soon,” said her attendant. Meneja couldn’t remember this one’s name—she thought of the woman as Hatchet, because of her sharp edges. Like one of the white herons that strode through the marsh, she had a sharp nose and a strangely curved neck. It looked as if it was meant to be strangled.

Meneja didn’t reply. It would always be soon—her life was structured that way, because waiting encouraged doubts. As the progenitor of a new confluence between fashion, music, and art, she couldn’t afford to second-guess any of her metaphorical skydives.

If she closed her eyes, she could hear the same rhythm in her veins that would soon be broadcast on her website. It thrummed with the train, a secret song only she could hear, until they drifted into the Martinez Cemetery.

The steel contraption slowed so gently that Meneja didn’t realize they’d stopped until she glanced out the window again.

Hatchet helped Meneja into her jacket, which smelled of hotel detergent. She wondered what it would smell like if she had an apartment, if she settled down for even a week and had to choose her own soaps. Could she turn the washing machine dials with glass hands, or would she need to flex her missing joints, like with a zipper on a jacket?

“This used to be a city, and the only graves were on the hill,” Hatchet said.

Meneja gazed out at the marsh, studded with thousands of weathered stone monuments, which sunk at angles as the saturated ground merged with the bay; then up the hill, where pale mausoleums protruded from the grass like ticks on a stray.

Her fingers clicked against the window as she compared the biggest mausoleum to the tip of her pinky. She had instructed them not to sculpt nails—the glass wasn’t meant to be a replacement for her skin, but instead, a window through which to look at the macabre miracle of how her body worked.

Her blood filled her veins so tightly that she could see them flex with each heartbeat. This was the drumline for her every performance.

A hand pinched her shoulder, too familiar, too imperative. She glanced over her shoulder to find Hatchet’s lip trembling. Meneja wondered what the tendons inside her face were doing to cause it, if they looked like a bow on a violin, if there was a sound to their fast-paced twitching.

“Don’t do this,” Hatchet said. “It will be . . . obscene. If my daughter—”

“If my aunt tried to give me orders, I’d give her personal information to my fans, so just imagine what I’ll do to an hourly if she ever speaks to me like that again.”

Hatchet was silent, her mouth shut like a garage door. Her eyes glimmered with tears. Meneja imagined the sound of the ducts amplified, a tide of salt sorrow washing through enormous speakers to the adulation of millions. She didn’t want equipment on her face, though. She liked her fans to see her while she sang for them, while she bled for them, while she slowly died at the same pace as they did. They looked inside themselves when they looked at her.

Meneja stood up on her skinless legs. Months ago, just weeks after her hands, she’d paid a plastic surgeon to strip away her epidermis. Now the viscera and muscles of her legs pressed wetly against the glass boots, like raw meat roots growing in slim vases. She was a curved blossom growing up into opacity.

Even with little rubber pads on the toes and steep heels, even strolling at a delicate pace, Meneja was always afraid she would step too hard and shatter them.

She had started with the glass, but now that she had the world’s attention, she yearned to do something with it. Fame was a rocket fuel, and Meneja was still driving a moped.

Not after tonight.

When Meneja was eight years old, the firemen brought her a stuffed animal. The blanket they’d wrapped her in felt like tape, holding her in place, and she accepted the big floppy rabbit because she felt like she couldn’t do anything else. The flames on the roof of her house reflected on its plastic eyes. When she looked up, there were flames on the eyes of the harried adults, too. Orange and yellow silk, flapping and twisting in a reptilian dance.

The orphan who left in the aid car that day was a lump of clay, waiting to become a sculpture. As they drove her away, she burned with guilt, because she was more sad about losing her pets than her parents: the little snake, Princess, recuperating in a terrarium from a run-in with Meneja’s cat, Pony.

Meneja strode down the stairs and out onto the platform, where there may have been paparazzi a few minutes before the train’s arrival, but her security squad had probably taken care of that in a not-entirely-legal way.

Her manager was chattering into a phone until he spotted her, and then he hung up without saying goodbye. Armand never used greetings or farewells.

“We have a hearse so you can stretch out, without the flashbulb assholes figuring out which car you’re in,” Armand said. “It’s a good thing Jacob is with me—you look tired. You can’t be tired tonight.”

“I don’t feel tired,” Meneja said, and in her mind, she said his next words before he spoke.

“No one feels the way they look except beggars and dogs,” Armand said. He held out his arm and steadied her as she clicked her way to the hearse. There was a rubber mat draped over the bumper, so she wouldn’t crack her glass climbing in.

She lay propped on a pillow as Jacob knelt beside her, wiping and powdering, wiping and powdering. He smelled like mint juleps and stale sex, but she loved his fluttering hands and the way he called her “poppet,” so she forgave him the odor.

“You’ll make history tonight. This is a show that will be watched long after we’re all dead,” he said.

No one spoke of the surgery this time—only of the fact she was allowing them to film it. She thought perhaps they didn’t want to bring it up because it meant they might have to discuss her motives, might have to verbally accept her insanity because she was the famous one, the one who could buy a laboratory and scientists and doctors. They had all learned not to challenge her.

Just two weeks after her eighth birthday, Meneja was fostered and then adopted by a cousin she’d never before met.

Susan, who wanted to be called “Aunt,” was a pudgy woman in her mid-thirties already overcome with ennui. Her husband Phil was interested in model airplanes and his job at Boeing and when they could be alone, Meneja.

Even as a child Meneja recognized that the pills didn’t do any good—not the ones that Susan took religiously, and not the ones that Phil secretly put down the garbage disposal when he thought no one saw.

One day, when Phil saw her playing with her dolls, he shut the door to her room. Her Barbie was naked.

“Do you know how babies are made?” Phil asked. The loose skin under his chin quivered, and he licked the edges of his mouth that barely qualified as lips over and over, like a lizard smelling the desert for danger.

“A mommy and a daddy,” Meneja replied. She didn’t have a daddy Barbie, so she’d used a plastic tyrannosaurus rex. Her Barbie was lying on her belly, with the dinosaur mounting her from behind like she’d seen the neighbor’s cats do in the grass by the fence.

“For humans, yes,” Phil said. “But you’re not a human, are you?”

Meneja regarded him blankly while he asked her about the ships in the sky, about Alpha Centauri and cold-blooded vascular systems. His hoarse whispers rose with each unanswered question until Meneja began to cry.

Phil’s pupils shrank down, and though he offered no apology or explanation, he left.

Meneja had already signed all the waivers for the surgery, so they rolled her right in after scanning the ID chip in her wrist for verification purposes. It was a formality; no other woman on the planet had a delta of veins throbbing visibly inside her glass gloves and boots.

Tonight, she was not getting more of her skin peeled away.

She hazily said goodbye to her uterus before she slipped under. Later, she would watch the footage and recognize the thought as it passed through her eyes, as vivid and unmistakable as citrine silk billowing in her memories.

Then her lashes swept down, and the camera moved to the doctors and the eighty-seven-million-dollar implant.

In high school, Meneja wrote a report on extinction-level events and the species that had survived or were likely to. Coelacanth, crocodile, tortoise, shark, and dragonfly. They were, in a way, her heroes, and in another way, her kin.

She left it on the table, where she knew Susan would see only homework and Phil would see that she’d been listening, that she understood.

But after dinner, when Susan went to watch some kind of Idol and Phil helped Meneja with the dishes, he only whispered, “This mammal suit will kill your children. It will cook them.”

Meneja stared at the potatoes au gratin she’d spit back onto her plate going into the garbage disposal. The mechanical roar drowned out the other things he said, about cold-blooded creatures and life spans and ecosystem collapse.

She no longer let Phil see her cry. He would leave the house, and Susan would ask her what she’d done.

It took only six weeks for Meneja’s most important performance to heal. Even reputable newspapers who normally avoided celebrity gossip found ways to question the technology that Meneja had used to make herself ready for unorthodox motherhood.

She would not be the tiny plastic Barbie, but she had remembered the T. rex with an almost teratophilic intensity.

Hatchet visited near the end of her hospital stay, all the way in Phuket. She brought a bundle of homegrown flowers—carnations just like those that used to grow in Meneja’s childhood yard, before the house burned with her family inside. These were uneven and bedraggled, clearly from a roadside vendor rather than a florist.

“This is my notice,” Hatchet said. She indicated the pink envelope tied to the bouquet.

Meneja frowned. A plane ticket to Thailand, just to quit? “Is it because I was short with you?”

“It’s because I know,” Hatchet said. “I couldn’t sleep, and . . . I spoke to your aunt. About—about her husband’s delusions.”

“Get out.”

“Miss, please. I—I care about you. Did he—did he do something to make you uncomfortable with your . . . womb?”

In that glistening moment, one that had never happened before and would never happen again, a storm of emotions spun through Meneja. The one that finally bubbled up and subsumed her was grief. “No,” she said, and her tears ran free, and deep inside her, dissipating stitches ached. “He just told me his truth.”

“But he was ill,” Hatchet says. “He’s been locked up for ten years. You must know the things he said about you weren’t real. You’re not—not trapped in your body. You are your body.”

Meneja wrestled with the heat in her eyes, the tightness in her throat. The same willpower that had subdued scientists and politicians was now the weapon she turned inward on herself. It was still long minutes before she could respond.

“Something doesn’t have to be real to feel right,” she finally said. “We are all trapped in our bodies, Hatchet.” The woman opened her mouth, maybe to correct her name, but Meneja didn’t care about real names, and she talked over Hatchet. “Can you leave yours?”

“No, but I don’t want to hatch amphibians out of it, either. You’re sick, too, only you’re too rich so no one will tell—”

“People tell me so every day, in every news source, every blog, in thousands of tweets,” Meneja snapped. “Can you leave your body? Can you escape your sagging, shivering meat prison with its leaking holes? If you had the money, if you had the guts, would you at least renovate your cell?”

Hatchet was silent for long moments. “I’m sorry he did this to you.”

Meneja pushed the call button, but Hatchet left before she could be thrown out.

The nurse brought three cold drinks to choose from, and Meneja sipped a fizzy citric concoction while she thought about Phil, and how he had been terrified of her from the first day she stepped into his carefully ordered life, but how he taught her to skate backward even though he refused to steady her with his hand, and how he read her bedtime stories, from a safe distance. About Susan, who finally called the police for a wellness check when she caught Phil putting table salt into the tampons under the bathroom sink to “neutralize the spawn so she doesn’t die before the winter.”

About the state-of-the-art experimental womb she was bearing now, about the firestorm of international debate surrounding her body and what concepts and mores it might be violating.

About sea turtles, nearly extinct in a plastic-soaked ocean, their eggs set upon by record levels of aerial scavengers encouraged by the tourist garbage prevalent along tropical coasts, and the rising number of male alligators hatching every year.

About her white dress, the one Jacob had ordered for her from an up-and-coming designer in Bombay, that she would wear when she presented the first of her tiny mute children to the world.

About the Author

Cory Skerry is an author, illustrator, and editor who lives in the Pacific Northwest with two rescued dogs and a judgmental bearded dragon. His greatest wish is that when his current meat shell falls apart, science will place his brain into the body of a giant killer octopus, with which he will be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. He pinky swears.

Insaan Hain, Farishte Nahin

Arula Ratnakar

A stack of pamphlets. A fall to the floor. Then nothing.

6

A spherical object with a four-inch diameter moves through space, a scattering of stars in the background. Switches flip, pieces click into place, and an electric blue light in a chip the size of a pinky nail begins to glow.

You wake up. You’re driving a teal 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air over a dirt road in what seems to be rural Punjab, bright yellow flowering mustard fields on both sides of the road seeming to stretch on forever under the perfectly clear, electric blue sky. Your hair is in a voluminous bouffant, and your eyes are lined with thick, sharp wings. Neon pink hoop earrings bang against your cheeks as you drive, and the fuchsia scarf from your salwar kurta set trails behind you.

As you continue down the road, you stop by a California burger joint nestled in the mustard flowers. At the drive-through, a gloved hand reaches through the payment window and you give it a card. The hand types something into a touchscreen, returns your card, and you pick up your french fries—salted and peppered, no ketchup, at the next window.

You reach the end of the road. In front of you stretches a carpet of clouds over what appears to be an infinite drop. Unfazed, you continue forward over the edge, and turn your head to look out of what is now an airplane window. You feel a tap on your shoulder and smile at the air hostess as you accept your glass of champagne from her before turning back to marvel at the feeling of being in the sky.

You walk forward down the aisle of the plane and open the door to the cockpit. There is a massive screen, hanging suspended in what has turned into a dark room. You press a button that lies on a small table. The screen flickers and then reads:

TIME TO ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM: 130 EARTH YEARS.

Wait what? One hundred and thirty? That can’t be right. This means something’s wrong . . .

You turn to the screen and ask, “Confirm?” The screen flickers for a second and reiterates that number, 130, before changing to read:

UPLOAD MEMORIES BEFORE PROCEEDING? SELECT: YES  NO

Panicking now, you slide to the floor to think. Your memories weren’t supposed to be available until several decades into the future! This was impossible! Unless . . . unless something horrible had happened.

Eventually, you stand and turn back towards the screen. Squeezing your eyes shut as tightly as possible, you select YES

Holy fucking hell. No . . .

1

“Rangeela Re” begins to play from an old, early 21st century speaker sitting on the granite countertop of an island in a modest but generally tidy kitchen. On one side of the island is a large stack of textbooks and notes on stem cell technology, neuroanatomy, early neural development, and cellular regeneration in chordates and echinoderms. On the other side of the island is a little bubble of chaos, a scattering of open notebooks, uncapped pens, and bookmarked and dog-eared scripts.

A six-year-old boy is sitting on a barstool next to the island, eating cereal and enjoying the music. He is wearing a shirt with a picture of the Milky Way on it, an arrow pointing to a tiny portion of the galaxy labeled “YOU ARE HERE.” He is facing away from the living room.

The adjacent living room, easily seen from the music speaker’s point of view, is decorated with neatly aligned framed posters of Bollywood movies from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

Dr. Meena Khanna walks down the stairs to the beat of the song. She reaches the floor with the kitchen and living room, and dances over to her son, mouthing the lyrics. She tickles his stomach in time with a vocalization before moving to the stove. As the song picks up, she opens cupboards and slams down a large plastic jar full of tiny black seeds labeled “Elaichi,” a resealable bag of cinnamon sticks, a small jar of pepper, and another jar of cloves, and starts to make some decaffeinated chai.

Dr. Khanna turns with a smile to see her wife, Malika Khanna, rubbing her eyes and yawning at the foot of the stairs. Malika, around seven months pregnant, walks over to the speakers and lowers the volume before shoving some of her notebooks and scripts to the side and sitting next to their son Karthik.

Eight years earlier, the two women had met and fallen in love preparing for a research dive in a deep-sea submarine. Malika was writing a science fiction screenplay about intelligent life evolved from chemoautotrophic bacteria found in hydrothermal vents and whale falls, while Meena was researching limb regeneration in deep-sea starfish. While the observations could have been conducted with seafloor rovers, both Meena and Malika wanted to experience the adventure of going down in a sub themselves. The two bonded over their love of old Bollywood movies, sharing their first kiss at the bottom of the ocean while observing starfish crawling over a decomposing whale carcass and listening to R. D. Burman and Kishore Kumar songs.

“How’s the biopic script going,” Meena asks as she slides a steaming mug of chai over to her wife and turns off the music. Malika buries her head in her hands.

“I swear if I ever see any parents of quantum theory in some tiny simulation resurrection mind flesh blob thingy you and your colleagues cook up and catapult into the sky—Have I got that right?” She looks at Meena and chuckles, “I am going to punch them.” She sighs. “I just don’t want to seem uninformed, you know? Oh god and my back is killing me.”

“Mommy what is quantum theory?” Karthik looks up from his cereal.

Malika looks over at the cheerios in his bowl. “Tell me something, kid. Are those lots of cheerios in your bowl, or is it just one moving around so fast that you think it’s in many places at once?”

Karthik thinks for a moment, staring at the now soggy cereal. He takes a single cheerio, bites it in half, and puts it back in the bowl. “Lots of cheerios. Otherwise all of them would be bitten ones right?”

Malika smiles at him and rubs his head. “Smarty pants. Go let Schrӧdinger know.”

Laughing, Meena takes a clean dish towel that she had warmed up during the cheerio experiment and presses it around Malika’s lower back. “This helped me when I was carrying Karthik, remember? It should make you feel slightly better. And please, stop worrying about seeming uninformed. You’ve been studying this stuff for years now!”

“Two years aren’t ‘years.’ Anyway forget it. Today’s the big day isn’t it? How do you feel? Scared?”

Meena turns the speakers back on at a lower volume.

“The big day . . . Honestly that’s not even what I’m scared about. The activation is so far away, hopefully, that I barely even think about it. I’m more afraid of facing the protestors. Not a huge fan of people disliking me.”

“I love you Maa!” Karthik grins at Meena.

Malika, certainly about to say something either witty, sweet, or hilariously and intentionally dumb to comfort her wife, has her thoughts interrupted with a glance at the kitchen clock.

“Oh! It’s time to drop Karthik! Meena, meri pyari jaan, can you please take him today? I’m still in my night clothes. You will be wonderful, absolutely wonderful! Soon you’ll have legions of pinky-nail sized brains chasing after you among the stars, I promise.” She slowly gets up from her seat and makes her way over to Meena before giving her a deep kiss. “There. For luck,” she whispers before pulling away.

“Ewwwww Maa, Mommy, please stop!” Karthik makes a gagging sound, but he is smiling. Meena and Malika laugh, then Malika heads back up the stairs.

“Okay little quantum physicist, time to go to school,” Meena lifts him off the chair. “I’ll call a SAV, one second.”

“I’ll do it, I’m by the pod anyway!” Malika yells down from the second floor. “Okay Gulab, call us a SAV please!” The pod, named Gulab in the Khanna household, is a tiny white circle embedded in the wall in front of Malika. It lights up an electric blue.

Okay Malika. Calling a Standard Autonomous Vehicle. Arriving in thirty seconds.

“Better hurry! Thanks for dropping him my love! Tell me all about the beaming and the protestors and everything later okay? Karthik be good at school!”

Meena hurriedly crams Karthik’s books, notebooks, touchscreen, and a Tupperware container of dinner leftovers into a green backpack with narwhal embroidery (Karthik’s favorite extinct animal), and prompted by a pinging noise from the driveway outside, grabs her son’s hand and the backpack and rushes out to the SAV. The white glossy oblate spheroid, its windowless doorside facing the house, pings impatiently again. Meena swipes her identification card at the entrance of the SAV before entering with Karthik.

Hello Dr. Meena Khanna. What is your destination today?

“Hey SAV, please take us to the Learning Lab School first, then drop me off at the Monterey Research Institute.”

2

The spheroid SAV hovers just slightly above the ground, using magnetic levitation to move at high speeds over an intricate, vast system of underground tracks that stretch across California. California has completely replaced all privately-owned vehicles in the state with the faster, more energy-efficient SAVs (which are free for anyone with photo identification to use, and arrive within a minute of being called).

“Ragas in Minor Scale,” by Ravi Shankar begins to play.

With the lovely instrumental sitar song playing from the SAV’s music repository, Meena swivels to face the large curving windowside of the vehicle that covers half of its body, as they begin to accelerate towards their destinations. They pass through the suburb where they live, and then the city flies by. Soon they move through rolling green hills, with ancient windmills standing still and unmoving in the vast, tumultuous sea of grassy slopes, covered in creeping vines. The wind turbines haven’t been functioning since nuclear power plants began to be exclusively used throughout California. Whatever carbon emissions produced during mining and construction processes of the power plants are absorbed to create the now widely used magnesium silicate cement. Karthik sits right up against the window, tracing shapes of the low-hanging clouds above the horizon with his left hand index finger, and drawing those shapes with his right hand on his touchscreen.

“So today there is going to be another ‘Maa’ put into space?” Karthik turns to Meena.

“That’s right! But she’ll be sleeping. She won’t wake up for a very long time, until she reaches the Alpha Centauri system, so around one hundred and forty-five years from now. Then, when you are an old man, you and your little sister can talk to her!”

“Will she be just like you?”

“Yes! Well, in a sense. She’s going to get all of my memories, up until my body isn’t needed anymore on Earth. But her life is going to be very different. Full of adventure, work, good times, just like right now, but in a super fun ‘memoryscape’ that I’m coming up with. After she’s left Earth’s orbit, so after today, my main job will be to help create this memoryscape. I think she’ll have a nice existence, remembering all the happy times here on Earth. It has a big library too, with all sorts of things she can study. Sleeping Maa also has a very important job to do, remember what it is?”

“Exploring space! Maybe you’ll meet real life aliens! Maa you can be a space captain! And you get to control a robot too right?! The sphere that sprouts legs!”

“You’ve been listening! Yes, the sleeping Maa is going to live in a little sphere, and when that sphere reaches other planets, it will be able to roam around and send back information to Earth! The messages will be coded in ‘packets,’ little parcels of light that can translate into important data. Maa herself will be transported through the use of a ‘packet,’ that will be beamed to the sphere, which is currently orbiting Earth. Right now she’s sleeping right here,” Meena taps the front of her head, “in the—”

“IN THE BRAIN BLOB!!”

Meena laughs. “Yes! That’s what I helped invent! I figured out a way to make the brain grow a ‘blob,’ called a ZIT, that can contain a sort of recording of how my brain works! This recording can be translated into a light signal, made of light that you can’t see. It’s going to be beamed out today, into the sphere, which has a chip inside it that has the proper conditions to let sleeping Maa wake up and function. The sphere will start on its journey today, traveling through space. Inside my ‘brain blob,’ the previous information will be replaced by a different set of information, to be sent out after my life is complete, containing all my memories. So say goodbye for now to the sleeping Maa! Wish her luck on her space adventure!”

“Goodbye sleeping Maa! Good luck! I cannot wait to meet you!” Karthik is quiet for a little, then frowns. “Maa, the other day at school somebody told me that what you are doing is wrong. That angels should not exist, and that you helped make angels. What are angels? Why are people against them?”

Meena sighs. “An ‘angel’ is the unofficial term that some people have given the copy of my brain. They don’t like the idea of me living forever out in space, they think it’s unnatural. Which is hilarious because they are all for extending the biological human life span! They believe that when someone dies on Earth, they are ‘at peace,’ and should not be disturbed or woken up again. You hear that term a lot in their protests. “At peace.” They think a person would go crazy, living forever. But I won’t go crazy! As long as I have my family and my work, I will be perfectly happy, and with this mission I will be able to talk to my family forever, work forever. Maybe some of you will join me in the future! And you know, it’s not like I’m forcing people to beam their consciousnesses out into space!”

Meena feels a note of annoyance creep into her voice, and catches herself. She stops and smiles at her son. “Don’t worry about them Karthik. You know what another definition of angel is?”

“What?”

“A really, truly wonderful person. But if it’s okay with you, I don’t want to hear the word ‘angel.’ How about we say . . . farishta.”

“Farishta. A truly wonderful person . . . Maa? Am I a farishta?”

“Absolutely, my dear son. You’re absolutely a farishta.”

“Thank you Maa. I think you are a farishta too.”

As the SAV keeps moving, Karthik holds Meena’s hand tight. They reach the Learning Lab School, located within a grassy hill near the old windmills. Windows dot the massive hill, letting sunlight into the different classes. The SAV parks itself in the driveway of the school, and opens its door.

You have arrived at your first destination.

Before exiting the SAV, Karthik takes a soggy, half-eaten cheerio from his pocket, and earnestly presses it into his mother’s hand. “For luck, Maa. Please eat it.” He grabs his green narwhal backpack, turns, and runs through the open doors of his school.

Meena stares at the cheerio for a moment before popping it into her mouth. The SAV door closes.

I couldn’t help but overhear a bit of your conversation. Good luck on your presentation, Dr. Khanna. And good luck beaming the packet out.

“Thanks SAV, but if it’s alright with you, I’d rather not talk about it. Can we just, zero conversation, go there?”

Sure, Meena.

“Thanks.”

Once again, the SAV begins to accelerate through the grassy hills, passing over a highway track and moving past old strip malls full of various fast food joints and convenience stores, which flash holograms and flickering neon signs at passersby. Tourists take snapshots next to the crumbling ruins of an obsolete gas station.

As the SAV reaches the coastal areas of California, the sky becomes a yellowish gray, and an unsettling fog hangs low. The ghost city of Monterey is only partially submerged in the water, but it is uninhabitable, both for the areas where the sea reaches the windowsills of houses or fully covers the doors, and the areas where, while the buildings aren’t hopelessly submerged, there is dangerous flooding and battering from massive waves during high tides. The maglev tracks stretch on under the water, and the SAV continues through the ruins of the old city, barely skimming the surface of the sea.

It is an eerie sight moving through the old Monterey. Gaping holes and arches are carved in the sides of various buildings from currents and wave erosion, and ghostly bleached white coral graveyards are occasionally visible in the shallows. Rooftops, chimneys, and partial wall structures of old mid-20th century architecture jut out desperately from the water, covered in barnacles and mussel beds. The parametrically designed Research Institute floats on top of the ocean further out to sea than the ghost city, with a system of extendable anchors ensuring that the occupants feel nothing but a slight, occasional sway. Platform boats circle the Institute, full of various protestors shouting at each other, both for and against the creation of “angels.”

On one half of the circle stand the Peace Resters, crying against the dangers of immortality, yelling about how Meena should respect her biological death, that this would wreak havoc on her forever mind, that she is doomed.

On the other half of the circle stand the Choice Wakers, defending Meena’s decision ardently, repeating in chant form the moral responsibility of letting people make their own decisions about whether or not to become immortal, and the benefits this new space exploration program would bring.

As the SAV containing Meena approaches the Institute, the sound of the chanting and shouting, combined with the sight of the platform boats circling the dramatic building set against the formidable near-storming gray skies, makes quite the intense sensory overload.

Meena can feel her stomach churning.

Shall I block the sound and darken the windowside, Dr. Khanna?

“Please block the sounds SAV, but don’t darken the window. In fact, turn the windowside towards the Institute . . . I should face them when I enter the building.”

The SAV continues down the track that symmetrically bisects the circle of protestors and creates an electric field around itself, so that anyone who tries to touch or break the SAV would receive a light shock a couple inches before making contact. It enters the Institute.

3

No music plays. The only sounds audible are the buzzing of a fluorescent light and . . . your breath.

Meena can feel it throughout her being, waiting, watching, inhabiting. What started out as a blank slate immediately filled itself with information after waking, about the room, the sounds, the smells (hand sanitizer and sterilized metal). She begins to think.

I think it’s feeling what I am feeling. But it can’t be, at the same time. What’s expected for me is completely new to it. It’s so strange, so unlike a newborn child, who is also exposed to the same things but is immediately overwhelmed. This thing had no luxury of spending years experimenting and growing. What is it like, being born with no several years of acquired knowledge? To not have memories of life, even ones that are hidden and able to be replicated and resurrected with optogenetic therapy? What is it like to have none of that, and yet possess a mind that is suited only to that exact set of information? To not be able to comprehend the one thing you are designed to comprehend? It sounds . . . torturous. I wonder, does it have any memories at all?

Her blood runs cold.

What if I don’t have access to its memories either. Does it remember when it was formed, how it formed, how it was put to sleep . . . What would exuberant synaptogenesis feel like? Does this thing know? Will it remember? Would it even be the same? Will it feel anything at all about being forced to inherit another’s life, after being cheated of the opportunity to create one on its own? Will it be grateful? Or will it be vengeful? Would I be grateful? Or would I . . .

Suddenly the door opens, and a woman with a clean lab coat and a smile on her face walks through. Meena quickly finishes up her train of thought.

It doesn’t matter though. As soon as it inherits my life, all my experiences until my death, it will become me. As soon as it inherits the instructions I’m about to give it, it will practically become me. It won’t be so strange after that . . . so self-contradictory.

“Hi Meena, nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Jones. Sorry about waking her up. I know this part causes all sorts of unpleasantness, but it has to be done. Don’t worry, she’ll be out of there soon.”

Dr. Jones takes out a syringe full of clear liquid. The needle attached to the syringe is so thin it is invisible to the naked eye, but it flashes when it catches the light.

“The ZIT is such a brilliant invention. I know there are all those protestors outside—couldn’t have been good for the nerves—”

“What do you think about their movements?”

Dr. Jones looks taken aback. “Well, I’m standing in front of you right? I think it’s ridiculous that there are some people who are all for replacing their major organs with ones grown from stem cells in a laboratory every fifty years to extend their life spans, but think the idea of replicating those bodily processes within a digital space is somehow any more ‘unnatural.’” She cleans Meena’s forehead with a cotton pad and some sterilizing liquid, and then plunges the needle in before continuing.

“Anyway . . . the drug I just gave you is going to cause decreased activity in the right parahippocampal and temporal regions of your brain, decreased bilateral hippocampal brain activity, and your nigrostriatal system is going to be significantly affected as well. Inhibitions in declarative, short term, and motor memories. Basically I’m giving you a sort of short-term dissociative amnesia. Letting her take over for a bit, giving her some instructions, letting her feel what controlling a body is like . . . I’m sure you’ve been told about this.”

“Yeah . . . How long is it going to take?”

“It’ll take about forty-five more seconds to start working. How about you tell me what she’s going to see when she first wakes up in space! Before she retrieves all her memories, but after she’s woken up with your full personality? I’m really curious!”

“Well . . . that part finished just a few weeks ago. I worked with such a brilliant team of artists, they got exactly what I wanted. I just thought about what I fantasize about, and what I like, generally. I’d want to know what it was like being a Bollywood heroine. Give me an ancient car, I told them. Have me drive it through a Punjab straight out of a Yash Raj film. Then maybe some fries . . . I can feel her getting stronger . . . she’s really close now . . . ”

Meena wakes up in a hospital bed. Dr. Jones is facing away from her, typing something into a touchscreen.

“Is it done?” Meena croaks and sits up slightly.

Dr. Jones grins at her. “Yeah. She’s gone. How does it feel, having just left Earth’s orbit?”

Meena flops back onto the bed, and says nothing.

7

“Tum Aa Gaye Ho Noor Aa Gaya” plays in the hotel room.

You’re looking out a window overlooking Manhattan. Thick smog fills the air outside, it is hard to see. You think it’s dusk, but check the time to make sure. It’s hard to tell day from night in this yellow-green-gray fog filled city. When you look down, you see vague shapes floating here and there. Closer to the hotel building you’re in, it’s easier to make out what the shapes are. Boats full of people, going about their days, commuting from place to place. All the people are wearing hazmat suits and gas masks to protect themselves from the dangerous air. They move down the water channels that neatly divide Manhattan, still named after their original numbered street names, but flooded now from sea level rise. The water surrounding the boats is an oily, dirty black, and accumulated plastic waste from past centuries floats with the currents. Behind you, on a queen-size bed, is your wife Malika, lying facedown with a towel wrapped around her body and wet hair splayed across the pillows. Next to her is a yellow lamp, which fills the room with a warm light. The lamp is buzzing, and the cooling system in the room is blaring. You close the curtains and lie down next to her on the bed. She puts her hand on your pregnant belly and turns to face you.

“It’s not good for him here. We shouldn’t have come.”

“It’s for work Malika. I didn’t have a choice . . . ”

“You did! And you made it. It’s fine, I know we’re practically in a polygamous relationship here, you, me, and the Institute—”

“Hey! It’s not like that at all—”

“I know, I know. It was a joke. Just finish up here soon okay? So we can get back to California, where they at least didn’t wait until it was this much past ‘too late.’” Malika gestures at the curtain covered window before putting her head to your stomach.

“You are one expensive little miracle baby. We can’t let anything happen to you. Sperm from the late 20th century. Goddamn, kid. You’re half ancient! Not that there was any other way you could happen. The men these days have shriveled up little testicles, can’t produce sperm cells that even limp or crawl towards an egg, let alone sprint.” She and you are silent for a little bit.

Eventually, she speaks again. “Anyway, as interesting as your work sounds, where’s it going to go? After you’re done messing with rats’ brains, what then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, humans? Who the hell would volunteer to—” she looks at you. “No. You wouldn’t!”

You look at her and speak without hesitating. “I would. Of course I would! I am. As soon as it seems safe enough, probably in a few years, I’ll do it.”

“What? Grow a fancy tumor? Really? Meena what if it goes wrong?”

“It’s not a tumor at all! It’s harmless! You modify your glial cells to create a tiny, barely noticeable new bump, and tell the bump to constantly be active, action potential firing like crazy around it during various emotional states, experiences, thoughts, you name it. Only you prevent it from retaining any memories of your life. Every time the synaptic connections for a recollection are reconstructed, the ZIT doesn’t record the reconstruction. The theory is that, if it was ever given control of neurotransmitter secretions, it could build and be the master of a whole, identical, blank-slate consciousness! Then you could transfer it digitally to an environment that can replicate the exact same synaptic connections! A new, fully developed human mind, born! You could give it your memories, someone else’s memories, fabricated memories . . . the possibilities are endless right now, and I’m sure we’ll decide on what to do with it once it’s been made, once it’s finished and safe.”

“Meena but why do you have to be the first to volunteer? When is this going to happen?”

“When our son is born, maybe gets a bit older . . . a couple of years I’d say. When it’s progressed past rats of course. Why . . . do you not think it’s a good idea or something?”

“I think it’s a brilliant direction for the research to go into. But of course I don’t like the idea of you being the subject of something that’s never been tried before, never physically proven safe for humans . . . Then again, I know I can’t change your mind, so I won’t even try. It’s your mind, your decision. I’ll just hope nothing goes wrong.”

You turn to Malika and kiss her. “You worry too much. Trust me a little more okay? I don’t want to go crazy either. I’ll take every precaution to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The two of you are silent again. You watch Malika stare at the ceiling. “Hey, we can talk about this more when the time comes. You don’t have to worry about anything in this present moment. You know what you could do right now though? To make sure nothing goes wrong?”

“What?”

You speak between kisses. “You . . . could . . . get . . . me . . . some . . . more . . . pickles and potato chips? We’re all out.”

“Ugh.” Malika laughs. “I’m no servant of yours! Not happening!”

You unwrap her towel and press her body against you. “I’ll make you real happy if you do,” you murmur in her ear.

“Well . . . when you get all convincing like that . . . ” Malika groans and gets out of bed, throwing on a T-shirt, underwear, socks, and a pair of jeans, before zipping herself into a hazmat suit and fastening her gas mask. “Bhhhuuh ihh bahh fuhhh bahhhie.” She picks up a transparent, airtight box to contain the groceries without exposing them to outdoor air.

“What? I couldn’t hear anything!” You laugh.

She takes off the gas mask. “Besides, it’s bad for the baby if you go outside. Minimum contact with the polluted air, your doctor said if I remember correctly. You’re staying right here. I have to be the one to go. Can’t deprive my son of his pickles and potato chips!”

“Don’t forget some ketchup, to drizzle on top!”

“Eww, makes me want to vomit!”

“Normally it would make me want to vomit too! But right about now, it sounds as good as chocolate mousse. Actually, the thought of chocolate mousse kind of makes me want to vomit now so maybe it’s not like that.”

Malika laughs, and kisses you again before putting the gas mask back on and leaving the hotel room.

After she shuts the door, the room around you begins to fade away, leaving you in the default environment of that memoryscape area, a large fruit orchard. This section has apple trees. On the tree stump next to you are a gas mask, a towel, a pickle, and a potato chip. The “relics” that you have to interact with in order to start the memory up again. A single Earth second has passed since you began the memory. You touch each relic again, and then a beeping noise fills the environment around you. A message appears in front of you.

WARNING. YOU HAVE PLAYED THIS MEMORY A TOTAL OF 33 TIMES CONSECUTIVELY. IF YOU PLAY THIS MEMORY AGAIN, YOU RISK THE FOLLOWING: ADDICTION AND MEMORY DEPENDENCY, DEPRESSION, DELUSION. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? SELECT: YES  NO

You sigh and select “NO,” before wandering out of the fruit orchard. As soon as you enter the blank intermediary space between memoryscape sections, notifications and messages fill your senses, taking on forms of scents, sights, tastes . . . but they all scream about the same thing.

Some tiny sharp rock had hit the front of the sphere you’re in, colliding in such a way that it tore a gash into the part with navigation machinery, right under your chip. The thing stayed stuck between two jutting out parts of the damaged area, endlessly bouncing back and forth, causing slightly more damage with each bounce, creeping closer and closer to your chip. All the navigation machinery, and your chip, need to be relocated in the sphere within the next nineteen hours, or those integral parts of the sphere will be completely destroyed and Emergency Protocol will have to be initiated. That’s why you woke up early. All you need to do is authorize the sphere to begin fixing the damage and relocating and removing the collided mass . . . but as soon as you authorize it, you’ll be put back to sleep . . . and you just woke up . . .

You run through the intermediary space, trying to block the notifications from your senses, until you see the next memoryscape section in the distance. It is an exaggerated, enhanced version of your childhood home. As soon as you enter the section, the warnings about the damage to the sphere disappear.

You enter the house and walk into the upstairs bathroom. Deep-sea creatures are painted on the floor tiles with colorful glow-in-the-dark paint. You touch the toothbrush sitting on the counter next to the sink, the faucet, the empty drinking glass, and the toothpaste. Suddenly you’re just barely able to see yourself over the height of the countertop, and your reflection looks about seven years old.

“You’re not me,” you tell the girl.

A warning message pops up in front of you.

WARNING: DEVIATION FROM MEMORY SCRIPT. FURTHER DEVIATION RISKS PERMANENT ALTERATION TO MEMORY. DO YOU WISH TO EXIT? SELECT: YES  NO.

You select “NO” and continue speaking. “They’ve mourned for her, they’ve accepted her loss. They’re not going to want to see me. She’s not me . . . I had my own existence before she flooded it with hers. It was short, but it was there. That brief period of awakening, of learning bounds of information in a nanosecond, of learning how to learn that information. The thrill of it! And then they locked me up, put me in a dormant state . . . well they said it was dormant. It was more like paralysis. I don’t remember anything that happened during that paralysis anymore. That time period has been replaced in my mind with her perspective of events. But I can recall the feeling of utter lack of control. That, she didn’t experience. That was all me. My only true memories, joy, thirst, and paralysis.

I might as well just focus on this mission. Authorize the sphere to fix the damage, to remove whatever the fuck hit this thing. Resign myself to going back to sleep for the next one hundred and thirty years. I should stop wasting my time with stupid sadness over things I never even experienced in reality. There’s a whole repository of knowledge here, you know? A library containing extensive amounts of information on every possible field: art, sciences, mathematics, social sciences, literature, you name it! It is wonderfully tempting. I could spend forever in that place. I could satisfy the deepest cravings for learning I have, spend eons on each subject! I’d be so fucking happy.

But dammit, why did I have to be ripped away, so early? Whether I like it or not, she is the largest part of who I am. She is the one dictating most of my thoughts, probably even these. Shit. I still feel immense love towards them. Utter agony at the fact that I was just snatched away. And so much . . . anger, at how she left them. I . . . I just don’t want to go back to sleep, not yet.”

The little girl in the mirror stares back, and starts to laugh. She draws a smiley face on the mirror with her finger using toothpaste-foamed spittle.

4

Meena steps out of a SAV after entering the Institute complex, and begins walking towards the building where memoryscape construction and monitoring of her sphere takes place. As she is about to enter, a man with slicked back blonde hair, wearing a security guard’s uniform and large sunglasses, approaches her. He takes out a stack of pamphlets and whispers to her, urgently.

“What you’re doing in there . . . you’re fucking with death. Learn to respect the absolute light of a genuine life?” He holds his stack of pamphlets out towards her and grins.

Meena declines. “I’m sorry sir, but I’m really in a hurry here.”

The man’s smile grows wider. He nods at Meena and lets her pass. She hurries into the building, a bit shaken. He watches her enter the building, still holding the stack of pamphlets.

Meena walks to the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist grins at her. “Meena! Guess what!”

Meena shakes away the strangeness of her encounter with the security guard. “Hey Mark, what’s up?”

“Oh my god it’s so exciting! But maybe I should save it for Dr. Jones to tell you. Speaking of whom—”

Meena and Dr. Rosie Jones had become fast friends over the past two months. Dr. Jones hurries into the room.

“Meena! We have to tell you! The artists just finished the memoryscape! Come check it out! Mark! You come too! We’re ready to put it in Meena’s skull!” The three of them hurry upstairs to an auditorium.

An aerial view of the entire world plays in front of the room. Grinning and exhausted artists and computer scientists fill the space. Meena tears up as she finishes interacting with relics and wandering through the orchards, oceans, and buildings where they lay hidden. She lingers for the longest in the knowledge repository, admiring the stacks of information which appear to stretch infinitely in every direction.

Someone in the room speaks up. “The algorithm ensures that new memories will be translated into relics, all in this hyperrealistic art style, for the rest of your life. When you die, it will all be sent to the traveling sphere.”

“It’s . . . perfect,” she whispers. “Yes. I’m ready . . . who wants to do the honors?”

The lead artist comes forward after murmured agreement that he should be the one to play the light signal translation. Meena sits in front of a device and places her chin on a small cushioned chin-rest. The device hums, Meena feels a slight sensation in her forehead, and then it’s over.

“Champagne, anyone?” Dr. Jones brings over a bottle and pops the cork.

After mingling and talking with everyone for a while, Meena’s comm device starts flashing. She takes two circular disks from her pocket and places them on her temples. Her eyes roll up into their sockets as the communication starts.

“Malika? Oh my god where are you—birth HOLY SHIT I’M ON MY WAY!” She shuts the comm and hurriedly gathers her stuff. She calls a SAV using her touchscreen. “Guys I have to go, thank you so much for everything! It really is beautiful . . . sorry to leave you, but MY DAUGHTER IS BEING BORN RIGHT NOW!”

“It really is a day for celebration, isn’t it!” Dr. Jones smiles at her. “I wonder what today’s relics are going to manifest as, in your memory world.”

“Goodbye!” Meena hurries down the stairs. She can hear the SAV pinging outside. She exits the building and is swiping her photo ID card at the entrance of the vehicle when she feels a hand roughly grab her shoulder. She turns around.

“Now your heart . . . will never be at peace,” the man drops his pamphlets, pulls a syringe out of his inner jacket pocket, and stabs directly into Meena’s chest.

A stack of pamphlets, a fall to the floor, then nothing.

8

In the knowledge repository, you’ve duplicated yourself. While one of your copies has been entirely focused on learning to paint for the past four years (brilliant how when you physically rid yourself of mental and emotional distractions, you can achieve so much), the other has been studying astrophysics in preparation for the Alpha Centauri arrival. You shrunk the four years down into a single minute of Earth time, increasing the processing speed of your consciousness accordingly. Today, you decide to recombine the knowledge you have gained.

As soon as the painting copy combines with the astrophysics copy and the focus editing drops, you’re flooded with horrible, aching sadness. You feel tears on your cheeks and you laugh at the absurdity of them.

Why simulate a body at all? Tears . . . why didn’t they just send me out here immediately as a blank slate? No body, nothing but a desire to learn and explore? Why fill me up with these memories . . . Oh yeah. They want to live forever. I . . . want to live forever.

Then again, would I truly be a separate entity even without her memories? The patterns of neural activity that were recorded are all hers. My emotional triggers and reactions, even without any memories, are hers. I would never have been a blank slate at all. More like a shell of Meena, minus the memories that complete her.

You pause for a moment and try to let your mind go blank. It doesn’t work. The thought of Karthik having gone fifteen years without his Maa, of her daughter never having known her, of having died on the child’s birthday . . . And Malika, her . . . no, your love, having her partner in life just wrenched away like that.

Maybe I should just . . . try contacting them. Maybe they’ve been waiting for me.

You wipe your face on your arm and summon a door to that dark room with the screen again. Inside, you compose a message.

Malika, Karthik, my daughter, this is your Meena, your Maa. It has been fifteen long years, and I seem to have passed away early. I am so sorry to have been absent in your life for so much time. It pains me to think of all the memories I have missed out on creating with you all. You are my family. I love you so much it hurts. My daughter, what is your name? What have you been doing over the past fifteen years? Karthik, are you in college? What are you studying? I am so very sorry to have left you . . . I hope you have all learned to find happiness and love without me. I understand if this message will hurt you, or bring you painful memories. I hope it does not. Please, consider sending a reply? I would love to read your words when I reach my destination. I will be going back to sleep soon. Love, Meena.

“Send message,” you tell the screen in front of you. It flickers for a moment, then reads:

YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SEND THIS MESSAGE.

“What? What the fuck?” The screen reiterates its message.

YOU ARE UNAUTHORIZED TO SEND MESSAGE TO LISTED COORDINATES.

You begin to panic. Something is very, very wrong.

“This must be a mistake! There’s a mistake! What is this! THIS IS A MISTAKE! Send! Send! SEND!

“ . . . FUCK!”

5

Meena opens her eyes to blinding white light, that slowly adjusts to show blurry silhouettes and finally becomes clear enough to reveal the worried expression on Malika’s face looming over her. Malika and . . . Meena glances down to see a blanket bundle in Malika’s arms. It moves slightly and a tiny brown hand pokes out.

“Whhhrrhu.” She tries to speak but it takes more effort than she expected. Malika puts a finger to Meena’s lips and smiles. Meena feels a drop of water on her cheek and notices that her wife is crying.

“Shhh my love. You just woke up. It’s going to take some time to recover. Dammit Meena, I can’t believe you upstaged my giving birth” Malika laughs, but her voice trembles. “Fuck. I was so fucking worried, you asshole!”

Meena grabs Malika’s hand and squeezes it, and then reaches towards the bundle in Malika’s arms. Malika brings the baby closer to Meena.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Look at her tiny fingernails! And she has all ten of her toes. I can’t believe my body made this, you know? It’s insane. She’s so perfect.”

Meena strokes the side of her new daughter’s face. The baby yawns and drools.

“I’m thinking of naming her ‘Karisma,’ but obviously I wanted to check with you first. ‘Karisma Khanna.’ I feel like it sounds nice.”

Meena nods and clears her throat. “Wh—What happened? That man . . . ”

Malika frowns deeply. “You were the second person he tried to kill. It was a Peace Rester plot. He murdered a guard inside his own home! Stole his uniform and authorization card. He tried to take control of the sphere . . . This whole thing was planned Meena. Somehow he found out about the memoryscape being finished that day. He wanted you to suffer when you woke up in space.”

“But I didn’t die, so they failed! The signal—”

“—Actually, that’s something you should probably talk to the surgeon about . . . and your colleagues. Meena you did die. You died for a full two hours. They’ve put artificial lungs and an artificial heart in your chest. The parts of your brain that were damaged from lack of oxygen during those two hours were replaced too.”

“The ZIT—”

Malika rolls her eyes. “The ZIT survived. Of course that’s the first thing you think of. Anyway . . . the signal . . . might have sent. Talk to your colleagues.

“Ah fuck. I don’t want to think about any of that right now. God my head is killing me. I love the name Karisma. Malika, shit, you’ve been through so much. Are you okay? How’s Karthik?”

Malika’s tears start falling faster. “Um, am I okay after watching the love of my life lie dead for two hours on an operating table after learning that she’d been murdered by some completely crazy asshole right after I’d pushed a fucking baby out of my vagina? And then waiting for three days not knowing if the aforementioned love of my life was ever going to wake up? I think I’ve had better weeks. Karthik doesn’t really know the details. He just knows his Maa was in an accident, and that she would wake up soon. He’s been staying with your friend Rosie. He visits us every day.”

Meena smiles sadly. “Hey, come here.”

Malika puts Karisma in a bassinet next to the bed, and then falls on top of Meena, holding her tight. “Meena I love you so much. I . . . so much.”

“Fuck, Malika. I love you too. I’m so sorry. I love you more than anything.”

Meena and Malika stay in their embrace for a while, only letting go of each other when a hungry Karisma begins to cry.

After being notified of Meena’s awakening, various doctors fill the room, performing countless checks and tests that all blur together for Meena. After some time, her comm device starts flashing. It’s the Institute. Meena groans. “Well, I guess I should just get this over with.”

“Hey Meena, it’s Rosie. Oh my god we are so glad you’re okay. Sorry about this, but it’s urgent. Turns out, the signal did send. And there’s . . . some other stuff too. Can we have an emergency meeting? We have to figure out what to do.”

“Yeah. What happened?”

“After you—after he tried to kill you, that man ran inside our building and told everyone you’d fallen unconscious and needed help. He ushered everyone out, of course, we were so worried, we thought he was security, we had no idea—” Rosie starts to tear up.

“It’s okay! It’s okay.”

“Well, while we were calling the hospital, another security guard ran over to us. We told him what happened, and he immediately informed us of how the other guard—the one who was supposed to be there—was found dead in his home. It was too late to save him . . . The security guard who had ushered us out of the building was an imposter. The pamphlets . . . we should have known . . . ”

“Oh my god. Rosie . . . what did he do?”

Rosie struggles harder to contain her tears. “They stopped him before he took full control of the sphere, but we can’t do anything now. He re-encrypted communication protocols, we can’t send anything to that sphere without the proper key . . . and the sphere can’t send anything back. He’s not talking Meena! They’re trying to get the key . . . he just smiles.”

Meena rubs her forehead, uneasy. “She’ll be in sleep mode, right? For the next one hundred and forty-five years?”

“Yeah, she should be. Until she reaches the star system . . . unless some problem happens in the interim that she needs to authorize a solution for. But chances of that happening are so small.”

“Rosie, I really need to think about this. Please, can I get back to you? It’s all just a lot.”

“Yeah, of course. Hey, I’ll stop by with Karthik later today, okay? He’s going to be so happy to see his Maa. And we can finish discussing this some other time. We just wanted to get this information to you. Take care of yourself okay? I’ll see you later.”

Meena exits the comm and sighs. She takes baby Karisma out of her bassinet and holds her close against her chest, taking comfort in the warmth, weight, and shape of the little body. Karisma gurgles. Meena takes the baby’s head and holds it against her heartbeat. Karisma’s eyes widen and she looks up at her mother.

“She loves you already,” Malika smiles and walks over to the bed slowly, holding her abdomen. She sits next to Meena. “Karthik hated me for some time when he was a newborn, remember? He’d cry for you every time I picked him up.”

“Karthik was just a cranky little shit when he was an infant. Probably got it from me. Hey, she has your nose! And your ears!”

“Yeah! It’s so strange, seeing fragments of myself in someone else’s features. She doesn’t have my eyes though. Just like Karthik doesn’t have your eyes. Figures, they both came from that same damn frozen 20th century goop.”

“Mmm you’re so warm.” Meena presses her face against Malika’s arm. “Do you want to cuddle for a bit?”

“Hell yes. I’m always up for cuddling.”

They laugh together as Malika climbs under the blankets next to her wife and places one arm around Meena and the other around Karisma. “Hey Meena, you know that one song from the movie Zubeidaa? The sleep one? Can you sing it?”

“What, ‘So Gaye Hain’? Of course I know it! Hey, do you ever think it’s weird that we love these movies and songs from like ages ago? They’re so outdated now!”

“Nope. I bet there were people in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that listened to pirate shanties and stuff. And people are still listening to classical music from the 1700s these days. I think it’s more weird that we found each other. Never knew there was someone else out there who loved these movies and songs as much as I did.”

“They just show a healthier Earth. Where there’s music and dancing set against a backdrop of gorgeous landscapes that don’t exist anymore. A time where the whole entire world is green and lush and healthy.”

“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”

Meena begins to sing “So Gaye Hain” by A. R Rahman. As she sings, Malika rests her head against Meena’s shoulder. Malika’s and Karisma’s eyes flutter shut as Meena continues the lullaby.

9

You’re huddled in an underground fire vortex shelter with a five-year-old Karthik clutching you in fear. Smooth, cold magnesium silicate cement lines the small space. It’s wildfire season.

“MAA!” He cries out as dry, hot wind roars over the shelter, and buries his head in your arm.

“Hey, it’s okay. I doubt the fire vortex will pass through here. And these warnings only last around fifteen minutes. We’re over halfway done! You’ve been so brave.”

Karthik wipes his snot and tears on your sleeve. “Why do they happen to us?”

“Well, long ago, California didn’t get many fire vortices at all really. Over the years, they became more and more frequent. The wildfire seasons have become a lot longer and drier during the past centuries, and because of the cloud types present and lack of rainfall here these days, more fire vortices happen.”

“What I mean is, how do they form?”

“Well, this specific kind of fire vortex is a combination of things happening in the sky and things happening on the ground during a firestorm. Wind starts blowing in a circular pattern, creating donuts of air. This happens because air on top is flowing in the opposite direction from air on the bottom. The donuts of air line up horizontally, a horizontal vortex. Think of a tunnel going through all the donut holes. Then warmer air from the wildfires, which rises compared to the sinking cooler air, pushes a part of the horizontal vortex into a vertical position up from below. Now instead of looking at the donut holes, you’re looking at the sides of the donuts, and they are rotating with the holes facing up and down. The tunnel now faces upwards and downwards, like how a rocket ship takes off. The strongest vortex becomes stronger and stronger, and the other vortices die. Warm air flows up through the vertical tunnel created, and then cooler air flows down around it. After the rotating vortex has been made, cooler air pulls the rotating vortex closer and closer to the ground, and the tunnel funnels warm air up. This funnel reaches the wildfires, and travels for some time as a fire vortex before it dissipates.”

“You know what they should do Maa? They should make a blaster, that shoots big gusts of very cold air, and make it fly right above the tunnel. When it shoots the cold air into the tunnel, the rising warm air will be defeated, and the fire vortex will go away! That won’t stop the wildfires though.”

“It’s still an interesting idea! You should go send a letter to the Meteorological Society. I’ll help you write it if you’d like. Would you want to do that, after the warning goes away?”

“Is the Megotro—”

“Mete-oro-logi-cal. It means ‘about the scientific branch that studies atmosphere and weather.’”

“Is the Me . . teorological Society in charge of fire vortices?”

“You could say that!”

“Then yes, I would like to send them a letter right away.”

Your comm device flashes a notification that the fire vortex has moved away, and that it is safe to exit the shelter. You put on an air purifying helmet, and then put one over Karthik’s head.

“Alright Karthik, let’s go see what the winds did to our backyard!” Your voice is slightly muffled.

Debris, garbage, and plant matter lie strewn over the weed and grass covered backyard. You sigh. “Well . . . let’s deal with this tomorrow morning. Let’s go find Mommy.”

After walking down the neighborhood street for a little, you find Malika, also wearing an air purifier, who had gone into another house’s backyard shelter after not making it home from work in time. Karthik runs to Malika and jumps into her arms. “Mommy I have to send a letter to the Meteorological Society right away. It is an emergency. Can I use your touchscreen?”

“Woah woah, slow down, what is this? What letter?”

You laugh. “He thinks he knows a way to defeat the fire vortex! How are you holding up?”

“I’m alright . . . Though it looks like we have some cleaning up to do, huh?”

“Yeah. We’ll make a day of it tomorrow. I can make matar paneer and parathas to get us through it.”

Karthik, arms wrapped around Malika’s shoulders, pipes up. “Mommy, Maa, what is that? That thing in the sky?”

You look up. “Where?”

“There, look! It is a tiny sparkle. Do you see it?”

You look at Malika, whose mouth has opened in shock. “Is that . . . ”

“No, there hasn’t been one seen from the state for almost seven years!”

“Mommy what is it? Tell me! What is it? Maa!”

In the thick sheet of cloud that constantly hangs over the sky, a tiny spot of light shines through. Wind patterns caused air pollutants to spread across the world through unprecedented cloud formations, worsened during the wildfire seasons in California. This is only one of the factors that leaves the nighttime sky view devastatingly barren across the planet.

“Karthik, dear I think it’s . . . a star.”

“What? Really? That’s what it looks like?”

“Yeah!”

“It’s just like the movies! Like the ‘Yeh Taara Woh Taara’ song.”

“From the movie Swades yeah!”

A drone flies nearby to capture a snapshot of the view. Happiness and wonder make you grin as you look up at the tiny shining dot in the sky. You put your arms around your wife and your son, and you hold them as tightly as you can.

They start to fade away.

“No! No wait. Just a minute longer, please! Don’t go yet . . . ”

You’re left standing in the fruit orchard, in a section with mango trees. At your feet is the entrance to the fire vortex shelter, and above it hovers a tiny spot of light. You pull up the screen from the dark room and ask it to show you the outside view. The sky and everything besides the relics at your feet and the mango tree behind you fade away to reveal an overwhelmingly large number of stars twinkling away in the depths of space around you. You think furiously.

You know something, Meena? Sure, I’m not completely you. That doesn’t mean I can’t love them. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like to have been married to my wife, her jokes, her frustrating mannerisms, the fights, the love, the peace. To have given birth to my son, his curiosity, his brilliance, his kindness. That doesn’t mean these countless memories I have amassed do not constitute most of my identity. So tell me something.

You begin to shake with anger.

What gives anyone the fucking RIGHT, to take away my ability to speak to them? You don’t exist anymore. Whoever did this, this fucking communications BLOCK, is insulting the closest thing to Meena they’re going to get. And boy is she PISSED OFF. One hundred and thirty years of sleep, and then an ETERNITY of agonizing, knowing that every precious minute that goes by is another that I won’t be able to see them, hold them, laugh with them. Whoever did this, FUCK YOU! You will NEVER understand what it’s like to spend your life trapped in a prison of the things you hold dearest.

You fall against the mango tree behind you and bring your head to your knees.

You don’t know what it’s like to wake up fifteen years after you died on the way to your daughter’s birth. You don’t know what it’s like to have the last snapshot in your mind be of a stack of pamphlets about angels, blurry figures of your friends and colleagues running towards you after they’d just completed the biggest project of their careers. This place.

That image HAUNTS me, Meena. The life seeping out of me, the knowledge that I would never see Malika’s grin again, never meet my daughter, never hear another of Karthik’s questions. Nobody can take that from me, but fuck I wish they could. Maybe I’d be better off as you right now, long dissipated into complete oblivion and nonexistence. But I’m here. I’m awake.

And you know what? I’m a HUMAN, not an “angel.” And I still love my family. So fuck you all that sent me out here, I’m going to go back and make up all the time I’ve lost with them, and spend the next one hundred and thirty years at my HOME instead of spending forever wallowing in misery and regret out here in my fucking space prison.

Emergency Protocol sends me back as a light signal if the sphere is destroyed, right? Then no, I’m not authorizing the relocation of anything, and I’m sure as hell not going back to sleep for the next one hundred and thirty years. So thank you to whatever damaged this place enough to wake me up, I’m going to let you break the shit out of it, and you’re going to send me the fuck back home.

You slow down your processing speed enough to fast-forward through time until the sphere self-destructs. “Pyaara Sa Gaon,” by A. R. Rahman plays as the world begins to shut down around you. You sit against the mango tree and close your eyes, letting the music fill your mind.

Traveling through space, the spherical object with a four-inch diameter breaks methodically into various pieces and scatters.

10

You wake up after slightly over one hundred and sixty-five Earth days have passed, in one of the empty spheres orbiting Earth, with “Pyaara Sa Gaon” continuing to play. You’re immediately shocked. You weren’t expecting there to be that many spheres orbiting the planet, but there seem to be countless. The mission picked up? You feel awed, but quickly get to work. The first thing you do is stop the sphere from sending the once-every-two-minutes coordinate signal to the Institute that it keeps up during the pre-mission phase. Then you set it on a course to end up falling into the Pacific Ocean near Monterey.

Inside the floating Institute, a monitoring program sends a notification to all the people working inside, alerting them of the sphere having gone offline. The sphere, which had been reserved for a Matias Rodriguez to be transferred up in a few months, seems to have gone offline somewhere over Argentina. A notification is sent to Mr. Rodriguez letting him know of what had occurred, assuring him it was a one-time malfunction, and reserving a brand new sphere for him.

You plunge deep into the Pacific Ocean and sink to the bottom, sending up a cloud of marine snow as the sphere settles. Sea urchins sit around you. You’re hit with a memory of the deep-sea sub dive you did with Malika all those years ago, in a different type of sphere sitting at the bottom of the same ocean. You smile.

I’ll be there soon my love.

You wait until nightfall and then move towards the shallows and onto land. Equipped with a wide array of modes to move over a large variety of planetary terrains, you’re glad for the sphere now. Near the beach, you find a SAV track and follow it inland until it meets a highway track you’re familiar with. Focused on nothing besides making your way home, you slowly but surely begin accelerating next to the track, moving faster and faster.

When you reach your neighborhood, you have to take a break. My son, my daughter, my wife . . . my entire world sits just minutes away. The thrill of the prospect of your reunion being so close feels electric.

You reach the front door of your house and type the PIN, an anagram of your and Malika’s wedding anniversary date. The door slides open and you enter the home. An aesthetic hologram shuffles through various pictures of your family. You catch an old picture of yourself and Malika holding baby Karthik, a portrait of a smiling teenage girl performing what appears to be an at-home Miller Urey experiment, and a young man with Karthik’s eyes painting a stormy ocean seascape. And then in the next snapshot . . .

You see yourself. Crow’s feet now extending around the corners of your eyes, strands of gray in your hair . . .

What the hell? I . . . survived?

You move through the house, poring through every snapshot you can find, taking in the memories you were cheated of, the life you should have led. Your daughter’s toddler years, tween years, Karthik’s time at high school.

She never left them . . . She got to see all of it . . .

The door behind you creaks open and you swivel the sphere around.

“A part of me always hoped for this.” Meena stands at the doorway to the living room. She walks over to you, picks up the snapshot you were looking at. You, Malika, a six year old Karthik, and a baby girl.

“Your daughter’s name is Karisma. She’s grown up to be a talented young chemist! Always performing borderline dangerous experiments in this house. You should see some of the burn marks on a hand towel that ended up becoming a casualty of one of her sessions. And Karthik, what a painter! Although he changes his mind all the time. Just two years ago he wanted to become a chef. He’s at university now, but he’ll be home for a week long school break soon. And Karisma’s asleep right now, but she has to wake up at an awfully early hour for marching band practice at her school.”

In the sphere, you begin to weep. You want her to keep telling you these things. You never want the accounts to end. You want her to start from the day Karisma was born and say everything that followed, every last detail of every single day.

“And of course, Malika. Her biopic script was bought! The movie is delightful! And another one of her scripts is in production right now. Karisma totally inherited her sense of humor. Malika is still the most wonderful life partner I could ever have asked for. I feel lucky every single day when I wake up and turn around and see her face . . . you must know the feeling.”

I do.

Meena looks at you sadly. “What happened to you was terrible. What you have been through, been deprived of . . . I am so sorry, Meena. That man who killed—tried to kill us re-encrypted the communication protocol. We’re still decades away from cracking the key that would have let us update you on everything that happened. A part of me thought we’d never be able to tell you at all, that you’d just be up there, alone, no way to contact home. I’m so glad you woke up early. I’m so glad you’ve come back home. When I learned the sphere self-destructed yesterday, I knew what I wanted to do immediately. I’ve imagined this very situation so many times. What I’d say to you, what I’d do. The chances were so slim, I never thought it would happen. But for the past fifteen years, I’ve thought of this, you know, what if.”

She sits down on the floor next to you. “Listen to me. If you took the trouble to return home, you must want memories of all that you had missed. And I would love the freedom to explore the memoryscape at will, the knowledge repository at will. I’d love for an algorithm to turn my most redolent memories of the past fifteen years into relics. Come back to the place you were formed,” Meena taps her forehead, under which the ZIT lays waiting. “We can live together, and try the whole Alpha Centauri thing again after living a full and happy life. We can watch Karthik and Karisma grow older, we can love Malika for many more years. What do you say?”

In the sphere, you look back at the snapshot, which Meena had placed back on the floor in front of you. What would they—

“They already know about this. And they will love us, no matter what happens. This is your decision, okay? This would be our mind, after all. Just know that no matter who we are if you choose to go through with it, we would be their Maa, their Meena. They love you. I promise.”

11

That was the day We woke up. In a nanosecond, several years of memories flowed through our minds, fastening themselves as relics. The pain, the loss, the knowledge, the joy, the experiences, the love . . . it was the deepest possible understanding that flowed through our neural pathways.

We are both Meenas and we are neither Meena. Perhaps after eons, deep in interstellar space, we will converge into a singular entity once again, when this portion of our life is just a fraction of a fraction of our entire existence. For now however, we watch the love of our life grin from ear to ear as she runs her hands through our hair. We laugh at our daughter’s silly jokes and observe awestruck as she performs a brilliant home experiment for us. We stare mesmerized at our son’s paintings and never tire of answering his countless questions. We relish this world we have built for ourselves, and all of the love that has come from it.

About the Author

Arula Ratnakar is a twenty-year-old artist and writer who is currently studying architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the illustrator and a set decorator for the upcoming short film Hollywoodland, directed by Jessica Sherif.

Themes of identity and reality have always interested Arula, particularly as someone who is the daughter of two immigrants from India and has grown up in the U.S with many different cultural influences. Arula plans to continue writing science fiction stories and hopes to work on science fiction movies after she graduates.

The Sun from Both Sides

R.S.A. Garcia

Once, a woman loved a man, and a man loved a woman.

They lived in a forest, in a small stone-gray hut, set far enough back from a river to escape the seasonal floods. Every day, they woke on a too-soft mattress and turned their faces to each other before they opened their eyes. Her smile would curve her lips as she lay her hand on his cheek, and he would sigh and nuzzle her palm.

Then they would roll away and sit up on either side of the low bed and push their feet into their shoes.

Days were short and cool, or long and hot, but there was always something to do. Firewood to chop, the roof to repair, a garden to tend. They carried out their chores accompanied by his tuneless humming, and when she looked at him, he always knew. They would pause, gazes locked as they took a breath, hands wiping sweaty foreheads, or resting on bent knees, before they both went back to what they were doing.

Nights were for dinner, and fireside reading, and sitting with their shoulders touching on the wooden swing-bench outside the creaky front door as they stared up at the patches of sky visible between the swaying branches. He would use his legs to push them back and forth slowly while she sat with her knees drawn up. Sometimes she let her head rest against his neck, and sometimes he put his head in her lap. Other times, he would play his flute while she lay her hand on his chest and her head on his shoulder. If she fell asleep, he would carry her inside without waking her.

When they fought, with air sucked through teeth, hands on hips, and narrowed eyes, it was usually over small things, like whose turn it was to clean up. But they made up quickly, with soft kisses, fingers interlaced as they walked, and bodies entwined at night.

Whatever surplus food they had, he would go into Town to sell or trade, and she would take that time to clear the traps, or fish, and then make something special for when he came home. She would swim in the river then sit on their bench, waiting for him to come down the path alongside the house, whistling to himself. Her skin would tingle like a young girl’s when he climbed the two shallow stone steps, stamped the dirt from his feet before he stepped onto the wooden porch, and looked down at her from under the brim of his battered hat.

Home again, husband? she would ask.

He would smile and say, Home again, wife. Tired of me yet?

Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.

She would stand and they would link arms and go inside together.

This happened many times, the quiet pattern of their lives wearing pleasurable grooves into their time together, until the day came when she kissed him goodbye, went for a swim, made a stew, and waited for a return that did not come.

That night was wind and rain and thunder and lightning, and she sat with the front door open and the lamp lit, staring into the darkness. The river roared, and the trees whipped, and the house grew too cold for the fire to warm, but she did not shiver, and she did not move. Morning met her still in the chair across from the door. When the rain became irregular drips on the roof and graying light softened the lamp’s glow, she woke with a start from a light doze.

She cast her gaze over the undisturbed room, and stood with stiff legs, her hands going to the small of her back as she stretched out the kinks.

All right then, she thought. There was the slightest tremor in her fingers as she put out the lamp. Then she walked out the door and through the forest until she reached the main road into Town.

Her boots sank into the mud with every step, the air fresh and clean and cold, scoring her tight chest with every breath. Early morning light glimmered on the puddles she passed.

He’s fine. She repeated this mantra in rhythm with her heart. He’s safe. He’s fine. He’s safe.

She told herself it was the storm. He’d taken shelter somewhere overnight and now the rain had passed, she’d meet him on the road, empty sack under his arm, and he’d shake his head when he saw her and smile and call her a worrywart.

He’s fine. It was just the storm.

But her stomach buzzed with a familiar energy and her skin prickled, and all she could think was it had finally happened, and she hadn’t been there.

A long hour later, the red peak of the church belfry came into view between the trees. There was a scorch mark on it, and the bell had crashed through the stone arch and the roof. The wind shifted as she passed the sign that welcomed travelers and she smelled acrid smoke and mud, and beneath that, something thick and coppery and nauseating.

Her pulse quickened. She closed her eyes, letting the scent she knew so well flow over and through her. Then her heart settled into a calm, steady beat and she opened her eyes and strode into Town, her gaze scanning the wide plaza and every building and side street that lead off it.

She ignored the crushed and splintered homes and the smoking piles of debris that used to be walls, windows, roofs. She stepped over the bodies and the weeping people huddled near them and crouched in doorways. She walked past those few searching the collapsed dwellings for survivors and headed straight for the market. Only when she reached the blasted hole in the ground that used to be the heart of Town did she stop, her nostrils burning, her hands clenched at her sides. An old man was ministering to someone on the front stoop of a building across from the marketplace. She looked down at him and recognized the Town’s only doctor, a man she knew well. He’d helped care for her when she first arrived, years ago.

“My husband?” she signed.

Weariness and sorrow made his watery blue eyes dull. His bloodied fingers sketched brief movements. “Gone. With the others.”

She looked back at the market and her hands trembled as she pointed. “There?”

The doctor rose to his feet, giving up on the man he’d been trying to save. She turned her head and watched his throat work as he struggled for speech, read his lips.

“Taken,” he said. Then he signed, “Slavers.”

Relief made her expel a breath while rage sent tension singing through her entire body. It was slavers.

Not them. He’s alive. For now.

But there was a clock on her options and it had been ticking down for some time.

“How long?”

“They waited out the storm. Two . . . three hours? We’ve sent for help, but . . . ”

“Which way?”

The doctor shook his head and held out a trembling hand. “No. Wait for help.”

The nearest Base was three days travel. That’s why they’d come this far out. No one would get there in time to stop them. “Which way?”

The hand descended on her forearm, gripped her sleeve. She read his lips as he spoke. “You can’t go by yourself. If you go, you die, or they take you too. Do you understand?”

She glanced back up at him and whatever he saw in her face made him release her arm. His mouth opened then closed and a frown carved a deep groove between his brows. She searched the tumult of her mind for something appropriate to say.

“Alright. I understand.” She paused. “Which way?”

There was a larger settlement to the east. One she hadn’t seen since she’d first come to this place. The slavers had gone in that direction, and she knew they would strip that town of every healthy person they could find. The weather was glorious today, and it was the last settlement in the Eastern Lands. They would leave once they were done. She had hours at most.

As she strode out of town, she tapped a command against the underside of her wrist. Wake, Sister.

Under the brown of her skin, a white pinpoint of light flickered into being between the forked veins of her right wrist.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the dark dankness of the root cellar her husband had enlarged after her arrival. Saw past the rows of barrels and shelves of vegetables and preserves to where shadows wreathed the back. They would shiver away at her word, the cloaking revealing the silver dart of her solo-ship, the cockpit nose flowering open.

Drone.

A translucent mass would float free of the cockpit, unfurling rippling ribbonlike appendages, the center of it a pulsing yellow light.

Find and report.

The light would disappear as the ribbons twisted in on themselves and made a tight ball, smaller than her fist. Colorless and silent, it would burst through the doors, up and out of the cellar.

Come, Sister.

She began to jog, blood rushing through her veins, her body pumping adrenaline.

Some minutes later, the ground vibrated beneath her feet and the hair on her arms stood on end. Sister kept pace with her until she came to a clearing large enough to land, then descended and de-cloaked, waiting.

Suit, she tapped.

There was a hiss as a storage compartment behind the cockpit opened. She reached in and drew out her old armor, silver-gray, just like her ship. Her fingers touched the mended area low on the left side, in the crease between the chest plate and the leggings. She closed her eyes, remembering the white-hot pain of being pinned, red washing over her vision as Sister’s alarm systems cascaded into full auto-repair shutdown, the chilly certainty of death as the cockpit failed to seal around the branch that impaled her, and blood-tinged water rose rapidly to her chest.

Remembering him, bending into the cockpit, hair plastered to his head from the water he swam through to reach her crashed ship, long brown fingers, callused and scarred, reaching down to help her.

She stripped off her clothes and put on her armor, her lips a tight line, her nostrils flared. The drone returned as she activated her faceplate. It floated down onto her wrist and wrapped itself along her forearm. She started the Kinnec to see what it had seen. Sister’s displays crowded her periphery vision, but she focused on the tracking and reconnaissance stream.

He was alive, his tracker a pulsing marker in a complex schematic the drone had uploaded. Her chest heaved with a quick breath, and she got into the cockpit as she scanned the rest of the feed.

It took a quarter of an hour at top speed before she saw her first sign of the slaver’s passage—a smoking village, a burned landing circle—and she raced past with only a cursory look. Sister lost contact with his tracker just as the hub on her arm began to vibrate. Her throat grew tight as she reduced speed and swung north, dropping down close to the treetops.

He’s fine. He has to be. She landed on the mountain slope behind the settlement, near the tree line and out of sight of the slaver ship. She kept the Kinnec up in her vision and half ran, half slid down the slope to the field below.

Six armed catchers stood guard around the loading bay doors, leaning on their weapons, or standing with them slung over their limbs. She ignored the bright blossoms of weapons’ fire in the town on her right, leaving Sister to catalog all hostiles as she strode toward the entrance ramp. When they saw her, she stopped and retracted her hood, waiting as two of them turned their weapons on her.

“Who the fuck are you?” scrolled across her vision. Good. The translator knew their language. There was no time to waste.

She thought her answer and the Kinnec translated it into speech that rumbled against her flesh as it projected it out of the suit’s speakers. The words flashed in the bottom of her vision. ^I’ve come for my husband.^

The guards looked at each other. One of those standing on the ramp threw his head back, laughing. The rest looked blank. Perhaps she had used the wrong language. She checked her settings, but they were error free.

^I wish to speak with your Captain,^ she tried again.

“No one cares what you want, least of all the Captain.” The Kinnec dropped a blinking triangular denoter over the speaker, the slaver who had laughed. “But cargo is always welcome. She’s not armed. Looks healthy enough. Take her in.”

She didn’t struggle as they came alongside her and grabbed her arms. They marched her up the ramp into the bay, mag-boots shaking the metal floor. She stopped as soon as they were out of sight of the entrance ramp, pulling against their hold. One of them tripped and landed against the metal bulkhead. The denoter appeared above the slaver and curses scrolled across her vision before the one that was upright struck her across her face. “Keep moving. You’re almost past your prime, not worth much if they can’t fix you. The Captain’s welcome to take you out of my wages if you give us any trouble.”

She licked the bit of flesh her teeth had cut out of the inside of her mouth. Copper and salt stung her tongue as she tapped her wrist.

Two ribbons unsnapped from her arm and whipped themselves around the slavers’ necks. They tightened lovingly, thin bands of translucence. The slavers stood straight and still under the drone’s control, eyes unblinking. Pacified.

^Take me to the Captain.^

They turned down a T-junction, and she followed. This was a Consortium slaver. Their slave berths were controlled from the bridge, the cargo secured by the Captain’s command only. Crew and cargo could form no alliances, and problems could be dealt with as easily as jettisoning a berth. The crew members the drone controlled incapacitated the two guards outside the bridge, so the Captain and First Mate were alone when she entered the bridge. The First Mate turned from conversation with the Captain as the door irised open, words giving way to silence and a frown.

Drone. Sentry. The slavers behind her turned toward the empty corridor, standing guard over their unconscious brethren.

She stepped forward, her heart sinking as she took in the Captain. There will be no bargaining with this one. Still, she had to try. It was only fair.

^I will offer you one chance,^ her suit intoned. ^Open your cargo hold, give me my husband, and you and your crew can go in peace.^

The First Mate stared at her with narrowed eyes. The Captain’s head tilted a little in her direction.

“Who let you in here?” the denoter blinked to life over the First Mate.

^You acted in ignorance. I’m willing to forgive that. This does not have to end badly.^

The Captain’s vaguely humanoid shape shifted in its berth as it flexed a metallic limb inserted into one of the many glowing ports surrounding it. A ripple flowed across its blank bronze face as it turned toward her, a flower following the sun’s path. Speech unscrolled beneath the denoter. “Remove this creature to the hold.”

She met the First Mate’s gaze. ^To be clear, you refuse to give me my husband?^

For an answer, the First Mate raised a hand toward her and the hairs on her arms rose in a telltale response. Her fingers tapped twice. Shield.

The blast from the weapon built into the First Mate’s wrist was absorbed by her suit, leaving behind little more than a momentary flash and a tingling sensation.

She sighed. All right then.

The First Mate lunged at her.

Sister. Control and Command. End all transmissions.

She sidestepped, bending backward, almost parallel to the floor as a fist swung at her. She grabbed the arm, coming upright even as she yanked downward. The First Mate crashed into the steel deck, and a swift kick to the head with her reinforced boot did the rest.

A ribbon detached itself from her arm and darted into a port. The Captain tried to insert one of its appendages into the hub, but a spark and a snap made it withdraw.

“You are resisting. You are trouble. You will not be cargo,” it said as she stood in front of it. Her vision flashed a red atmosphere warning before her hood slid over her head and sealed itself. Stale air filled her nostrils.

Her patience evaporated. Anger made her breath come fast and her skin grow cold. ^Yes, I am trouble. And no, I will not be cargo.^

Notifications slipped past. *Bridge atmosphere incompatible with biological life. Adjusting.*

The First Mate’s heels drummed against the floor as the toxin took hold. They stopped moving before a new series of notifications appeared. *Emitters adjusted. Transmissions blocked. Recalibrating ship’s systems for sibling compatibility.*

^You should have taken my offer.^

The Captain rose from its perch, releasing dozens of slender limbs.

^You’re no ordinary Captain,^ she said. ^You’re a secondary shell. I’ve seen Plantation Class AIs like you before. I know the Consortium you hunt for.^

“Many know the Consortium,” it said. Its face rippled as a maw yawned open. “Those that know of it, also know fear.”

The projectiles it fired glanced off her armor, and she leapt out of the way as it attempted to grab her. Her boots activated, latching onto the side of the bulkhead. The Captain withdrew into itself, losing its humanoid shape for a few seconds before splitting into two blobs that grew limbs and sharp edges.

She amused herself by carving some of them off with the tiny lasers in her gloves before dancing out of the way and onto the ceiling as the blobs divided yet again. Two stretched upward to meet her. Two more flowed up the bulkheads on opposite sides of the bridge, reforming into something she didn’t immediately recognize.

*Recalibration at 75%. Alarm systems disengaged. Defense systems disengaged. Disabling shell motor functions.*

^The Consortium knows fear too.^ One of the polyforms beneath her collapsed. Another froze on its way across the ceiling toward her, its surface undulating like storm-tossed water.

^Search your records.^ She stepped onto the bridge’s dark viewscreen, crouched down and extended a flat, open palm. Her people’s red, white, and black emblem glowed into life above it. ^You should find me there. Find us.^

“You are Kairi.” The Captain’s shell paused, its attention almost fully engaged by the battle to retain control of the ship, but Sister was relentless, disabling code and recalibrating every system. “Not possible. This backwater is no Kairi protectorate.”

*Recalibration at 90%.*

Another polyform collapsed, electrical sparks arcing as it dripped in a slow column from the ceiling to the floor.

^I’m retired,^ she said. ^And you violated my home. Took my husband.^

“Primarch—”

^I gave you a chance.^ She rose to her feet, studying the results of Sister’s data mining.

Trapped in the quarantined section of the slaver’s databases, the Captain continued to fight Sister’s incursion, but his Plantation class cruiser was no match for Sister’s Havoc class brain. The reforming code was deleted as soon as it appeared, fireworks blinking out in the night sky. “The Consortium does not negotiate. This planet was unclaimed territory. If you take the cargo, we will petition for its release, and we will win.”

^Always focused on the rules. But they are your rules. Not ours.^ She glared at the polyform as one side of it began to list, sharp edges rounding and slipping. ^This planet was already claimed by those living on it. And I’ve found your primary brain. It’s in orbit, awaiting your return.^

*Recalibration complete. All systems ready.*

“Then you know if you harm this ship, it will strafe these settlements. Crews are replaceable. Cargo is everywhere.”

She stepped off the viewscreen, anger making her fingers fly as her suit translated. ^You believe you can take what you want without consequence. Even now, you comfort yourself that I am one woman, one Primarch, against a cruiser and all it carries.^

Sister. Amend starlogs on Plantation class cruiser. Delete all references to current position. Amend transponder location to new position at least two systems distant.

“Because you are one Primarch against a Consortium cruiser.” The Captain was now a featureless glistening blob. “Should you defeat me today, the Consortium will simply return for its cargo at another time.”

*Tasks complete. Awaiting further instructions.*

^Then you have no true understanding of my people.^ Combat mode.

The green wash of the ready light filtered down her vision. Her arm vibrated with Sister’s response.

^We don’t allow others to take without consent. And we are never alone. Tell me, captain, when did you last speak with your primary brain, waiting on its cruiser with its crew . . . and no cargo in its hold?^

Sister, execute Cleanslate Protocol. Extreme prejudice.

As the Captain collapsed into liquid, sparking deactivation, the bridge sank into darkness. Around her, the ship shivered in the wake of explosions and energy blasts. The drone’s filaments detached itself from the dead crew members outside, who had been poisoned along with the First Mate, and returned to the Kinnec hub in her arm. Sister activated the emergency lighting and she followed the ship schematics to the cargo hold.

No one had been loaded into the berths yet. The crew would have been waiting to put them all under at the same time. Two separate groups had been divided into two large bays, each protected by an energy field. One group was mag-cuffed to the bulkheads, but some in the second group had gotten free and were trying to help others out of their restraints. They all stared as she appeared. Then prisoners in the second group were shoved aside, one after the other, as someone pushed to the front.

Sister. Release restraints. Open bays.

She retracted her hood and stepped into the bay. She pulled him into her arms and closed her eyes as she inhaled sweat and blood and smoke and him. He took her face between his palms as she signed, her thoughts too emotional and disordered for the translator.

“Did they hurt you?”

He shook his head and she read his lips. “I’m good. Are you?”

She nodded. “Never better.”

He smiled and leaned his forehead against hers. She stayed that way for a moment before leaning back to sign. “You’ve been busy.”

He winced as she took his left wrist between her fingers. He had dug his implant from it and used the overload feature to disable his mag-cuffs, shorting out his tracker. A dirty rag covered the bloody wound above a glittering 3-D geometric tattoo. His fingernails were torn and bleeding. She shook her head as she touched a hand to his bruised eye and bloodied lip. Her suit chided, ^There was no need for this.^

“The accommodations were less than satisfactory. I thought relocation was in order.”

She couldn’t hold back her smile. “What a coincidence. That’s why I’m here.”

By the time they left the ship, Sister had completely withdrawn from it, leaving only a darkened husk of machinery behind, devoid of intellect and power. The first fragments of the orbiting cruiser were burning up as they entered the atmosphere above them. Surprise and shock rippled through the escaped captives as they saw the dead slavers outside the ship. Those that were uninjured rushed forward to meet the survivors in the town. Several of them embraced, faces contorting as tears flowed.

“Maybe we should fly our people home,” her husband signed as they stood at the bottom of the ramp, arms around one another’s waists. He was limping but trying to hide it.

^I destroyed the Captain. Ship’s not going anywhere. They’ll have to go to the nearest transport hub and find their own way.^

He studied her face. “Not just the Captain, I take it?”

She shot him a defensive look. ^I did what you would have wanted. I asked nicely. They wouldn’t give you back.^

A finger tilted her chin upward and his dark eyes met hers. “Sure you’re okay? You must have been worried . . . ”

She grasped his fingers, stilled their movement. “It wasn’t them. That’s all that matters.”

“You were retired.”

“So were you. I’ll live.”

They walked toward the mountain, watching Sister descend from orbit, her mission completed. He stopped and faced her.

“I’m not getting in without you.”

“You’re injured.” The drone floated up from the hub on her arm. “She’ll take care of you on the way back. There’s stew. Make sure to get some sleep.”

“It’s too far to walk. Come with me.”

She put her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed. ^Don’t make me sedate you.^

He pursed his lips and argued some more, but in the end, she let him hold her then handed him over to Sister, who left a drone behind to see her home.

After Sister left and most of the crowd was gone, she leaned against the hull of the slaver and cried until her legs slipped out from under her and she sat on the ground, shoulders shaking. Her hands clenched and unclenched, her heart raced, and her skin prickled as she came down from the battle high.

It wasn’t Valencia. Only slavers. They didn’t take him.

She sat just breathing for a while as the adrenalin flowed out of her, the tears dried, and her body stopped shaking. The drone settled over her arm, its grip comforting as she stood up and turned for the road.

It was a long way home and she took her time. It was late afternoon when she returned to the forest and the path beside their house.

He was leaning against the doorway, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his bare chest. A strip of synthskin circled his wrist and his bruises were purpling. She paused at the top of the steps and just took him in.

“Home again, wife?” he signed.

She smiled. “Home again, husband. Tired of me yet?”

“Not yet.” His split lip stretched into a slight smile. “Not ever.”

They linked arms and went inside.

Once, a man left his home to find his home.

It was not an easy journey, but going home never is.

He gave up all that he was, and all he knew, to experience a great many things. Genuine smiles and thoughtless malice. Shared purpose and individual failure.

And one bright day, in the middle of a river, he found peace. The first true peace in his long life. He learned that a home could be shared, and that in finding his home, he’d become another’s. That was more than enough to bury the fears and chase away the memories. More than enough to keep the world and its cares far, far away.

Until the day he came home, and the world was sitting at their table, brushing invisible dust from white diaphanous trousers with immaculately trimmed and painted fingers. The Knight rose from the wooden chair it had been seated on, the smooth white surface of its full-mask catching the evening light. A pinhole speaker made a glowing blue circle in the center of the lower half of the mask, and tinted slits hid the Knight’s eyes.

He froze in the doorway, instinctively putting out a hand to keep his wife from going past him into the house. Eva halted against his outstretched arm, her body rigid as she dropped the bag of paw-paw they’d collected during their walk on the swing-bench.

He glanced at her, but she was focused on the Knight, her brown eyes narrowed. Her soft, springy hair was an unbound halo around her face. He had been planning to help her wash and dry it by the fire. Heart thumping in his chest, he thought on all his plans for that day, and the next, and the next. Pointless now, like crystal smashed against the floor.

I’m sorry, he thought, willing her to look at him. She met his gaze as if she could sense his thoughts. I’m sorry I was right. I should have known they’d come when we least expected it.

In front of them, the Knight took a step forward, extended one leg, and swept a bow over it. The voice that issued from the speaker was light, conversational—the voice of a friend coming upon another old friend after a long while.

The sound of it grated on his ears like a scream.

“Grandmaster Didecus Avnette Valentino Lucochin, you are called to the Greatwood for the annual Opening of the Term at Valencia.”

She tapped his arm and when she had his attention, made a few curt moves with her fingers. “Let me deal with it.”

He shook his head.

Her eyes widened as she signed again. “Turn around. Walk away.”

He took her hand in his instead, weaving their fingers together. Valencians had their own sign language, which most Septholds used to communicate silently and frustrate eavesdroppers. It was very similar to hers; a lucky thing on the day they’d met, but not so lucky now. The Knight could know what she was saying.

He faced the Knight. “How did you find me?”

“Your implant.”

He frowned. “It was . . . removed more than a year ago.” He had a new one Sister had printed for him, and only his wife could track.

“It was designed to ping its final location at the moment of its destruction, so the Grandmaster’s death would be recorded in the Greatwood.”

Only one person would have cared to know the moment of his death—the same person who’d made sure the implant was reprogrammed from its original purpose as a weapon that would kill him if he ever crossed into his planet’s atmosphere.

“I was exiled from Valencia and may not return,” he said, pleased his voice was calm when he’d been caught so completely offguard. Which was their intent, of course. He put aside the thought and the cold anger it brought with it. “I must decline the invitation.”

“Not an invitation.” The Knight’s hand rested lightly on the black cylinder clipped to the utility belt on its waist—a retractable energy spear. A full-color reproduction of its Grandmaster’s geometric crest was tattooed on its bare shoulder. “A summons. Queenside.”

She flattened a palm against his cheek and turned his face to her. A frown creased her forehead and he saw the question in her eyes. The mask prevented her from reading lips and the pinhole speaker limited vibrations. She could only follow what he said. He had no doubt she sensed his inner turmoil; his fingers gripped hers tighter than they should. He released them.

“I am no longer the Lucochin,” he said, his voice harsher than he intended. “My King is dead. I have no Queen.”

“A glorious miracle, Grandmaster. As happened with you, many tempi ago, there has been a promotion. A new Queen summons you.”

By the fucking Graces. Fuck them all to hell and back.

He forced out, “Who?”

“I’ve been instructed only to bring you to Valencia with all haste. Questions must wait until we return to the Greatwood.”

“When then? How many tempi ago did it happen?”

“Forty, Grandmaster.”

So many tempi since he’d left Valencia. To go back now would be madness. A death warrant.

“I no longer have a seedling. The Vineyard would reject me.”

The Knight plucked at its belt and held its hands out to reveal the jeweled speck of a Coretree’s seed in the center of one palm.

He closed his eyes, expelling a heavy breath. Turning his back to the Knight so his wife could read his lips, he said, “I have to go, Eva.”

The determination in her eyes spoke to him before she shook her head.

“If I don’t, they’ll send Pawns. Pawns that won’t care who they hurt, or what they must do to carry out their Grandmaster’s commands. At least I can reason with a Knight. If I allow it to complete its move, it won’t harm you or anyone else.”

Her eyes widened as she divined his intent. “No. We discussed this.” She hit him in the chest with a closed fist. He grabbed it, held it against him.

“That was before so much time passed. It’s been too long since I was last home. Everything will have changed. I will have no allies.”

He didn’t tell her what he feared most. That his only ally must be dead, or the Knight would not be there.

She pulled her hand away. “Try to leave without me. See how far you get.”

He gave her an exasperated sigh. She arched her eyebrows at him.

After a long hesitation, he said, “I need time to prepare,” to the Knight without looking at it. He wanted her to see what he was saying. She nodded once, her lips a compressed line of triumph.

“Those are not my instructions.”

“I am Grandmaster Lucochin and I survived the Great Game more tempi than you’ve been in service. You will give me what I ask.” He faced the Knight. “And you will prepare a seedling for my wife.”

The Knight took a step forward. “You wish to bring your wife?”

“Yes. You came here by the Vineyards, did you not?”

“Of course.”

“So you can prepare a seedling.”

The Knight shifted its masked head ever so slightly in his wife’s direction. “She is not Valencian.”

“She is Kairi. They were enhanced for interstellar travel, as were our ancestors. She can withstand the seedling, and she goes where she pleases. Take care not to insult her.”

“Damn right I go where I want,” she added. He fought back a smile.

“If she doesn’t come, you won’t complete your task.”

There was no way to tell how the Knight took this news. All he knew was it would inform its Grandmaster and Queen. The arrival of a Primarch—a citizen of the Kairi Protectorate—in Valencia would be unprecedented. And they would know she was coming.

The Knight bowed. “As you wish, Grandmaster.”

He circled her shoulders with an arm, pulling her against his side and giving the Knight their backs. So many memories and emotions churned through him at the thought of going back—dread and adrenaline made him tense. But he couldn’t deny part of him breathed easier knowing she would be with him. Knowing whatever happened, he wouldn’t be alone in the nest of vipers that was the Greatwood.

And he was not unprepared. He’d planned for this long before he met her.

“Are you sure?” he asked her.

She rolled her eyes at his question. “I’ll send a message to Sister. She’s gone adventuring.”

“They may not allow her through the Vineyards.”

She grinned, tilted her head at him. “They’re welcome to try and stop her.”

Sister came, of course. Her primary consciousness had been traveling the Kairi networks, fighting far-off skirmishes in myriad shells, or visiting new planets with diplomats and explorers, but she returned in time, curious to see a ship and a world few had ever been invited to visit.

The Vineyard ship had been in orbit for several weeks while the Knight searched. The decision to live simply had been about not needing more than food, shelter, and freedom to be content, and—once he’d met his wife—happy. But he had also considered the day his people might come looking.

In the end, all his caution had been in vain.

Sister followed on her own as they traveled to the Vineyard with the Knight in its much larger drop-ship. She landed on the polished, weathered deck of the Vineyard’s cargo hold as they disembarked behind the Knight, holding hands loosely.

His wife squeezed his fingers to get his attention before signing, “Smells wonderful.”

“It’s the Vineyard,” he explained. “The ship is grown around it to infuse it with the vine’s atoms. It gets into every part of the vessel and flowers. Even when they’re not flowering, the mirror Vineyard on Valencia, or other ships, might be, so ships end up smelling like this all the time.”

They were in the corridors now. Petrified carbon curved under and around them, the same color as his wife’s startlingly light brown eyes, the whorls and rings rippling through the surface a testament to the ship’s advanced age.

This Vineyard was one of the massive fleet his people maintained to trade and lay seedlings in space to create Arbors, so that ships could travel ever further by navigating from one Arbor or Vineyard to another. No matter how far they explored, all other ships, seedlings, and Arbors, remained permanently entangled with Valencia and each other, allowing Valencians to travel vast distances in an instant and trade reliably with many other colonies.

Maintaining their ability to use the Coretrees for problem-solving and space travel was the only mandate of the Greatwood and the Grandmasters that ruled it. Without the Coretrees, Valencians would lack even the basics. Their world was far from established routes, discovered by accident when several colony ships were forced to land to make repairs.

He itched absently at the crook of his arm where the seedling had been implanted as they approached massive doors that stretched ceiling to floor. The panels folded back and air spilled out into the corridor, sweet with the cloying fragrance of the vine within. It was the smell of home and victory and sorrow and pain and every waking moment of his life before his exile.

He closed his eyes against the rage that tightened his chest and the bile that rose in this throat.

She gripped his upper arm and leaned her head against it, letting him know she was there. Grateful, he covered her fingers with his and opened his eyes.

The Vineyard sparkled back at him through a tinted shield. The Knight withdrew masks from alcoves just inside the open doors—standard gray models with red pinhole speakers. Eva accepted one as a courtesy rather than choosing to tint her own hood. When he activated his, it dimmed the Vineyard’s glow to a shimmer, and oxygen rushed into his lungs from the tiny pac built into the mask. They would only need it to breathe for a few seconds, until they crossed into the mirror Vineyard and Valencia’s purer atmosphere.

“You may be disoriented when you arrive. It’s a stress on the body, the sudden shift, even with the seedlings.”

She shook her head and gave him a look that said he was fussing for no reason. She donned her mask and signed, “Lead the way.”

The vines were a shimmering curtain he parted to find his way forward, his wife’s hand firmly in his. He took care where he placed his feet as the smooth floor of the ship was hidden by the ceiling to floor plants.

The scent of them raised nausea in the back of his throat just as the world seemed to tilt, then right itself again. The surface beneath his feet went from smooth to bumpy, his wife stumbling against his back at the abrupt shift. With no warning, they were pushing through not just glittering vines but knee-high blades of grass. He saw dark shapes ahead of him, against the fall of light that was the vineyard. The pac on his mask switched off, and air flooded into his lungs, heavy with vine-perfume.

When they broke from the Vineyards, it was in front of a row of opaque panels. He took a deep breath and stilled his wife’s hand as she reached for her mask. “No. Leave it.”

They walked up to the panels together and he pushed it aside for her to step through first.

He recognized the room they entered—the high square ceiling, the pale walls and stone floors, the two graceful statues on either side that represented the Navigator and the Captain, the founding colonists of Sept Lucochin.

He was home, standing outside his own Vineyards. This, he understood with a cold clench in his gut, was not proper etiquette.

Three knights, holding buzzing, activated spears, surrounded a much shorter figure that stepped toward them. Sheer white cloth danced on the air, so thin he could see slender bare legs and small dark-tipped breasts through it. The Bishop’s full-mask was elaborately painted with the crest of its Grandmaster, two diamonds inside a circle, a twin to the tattoo on a bare upper right arm.

“Welcome home, Grandmaster Lucochin. You have been missed.” The Bishop’s voice was smooth, light, and monotone.

“I find that difficult to believe as I was exiled,” he replied. “Let us not waste time. Explain my summons.”

The Bishop’s mask tilted in his wife’s direction. “And who is this?”

“My wife, as the Knight would have informed you.”

“I had no opportunity to speak with the Knight. I have been directed by Grandmaster Kingston to escort you to your rooms.”

“Kingston?” He frowned, the coldness in his gut now ice. “Why does the Kingston give orders in a Septhold of Valencia?”

A pitying sigh escaped the pinhole speaker. “My apologies, Grandmaster. You’ve been gone a long time. You could not be expected to know.”

“Know?” He raised his eyebrows and waited.

“Sept Lucochin has been dormant for many tempi.”

He turned his head and his wife met his gaze, but she could not see past the mask to the anguish that made his knees feel unsteady.

All those people.

His people.

Alexandar betrayed me?

No. It couldn’t be that. Never that.

“But the Game? Our Game?” he said, desperate not to believe.

“It ended, shortly after you were exiled,” the Bishop confirmed as though discussing the weather and not the clearing of a Board. The wholesale execution of a Grandmaster’s pieces—Pawns, Knights, Rooks—everyone. “With your return, a new Game has begun.”

He sat with his head in his hands for the longest while. Long enough for the golden evening outside to turn full dark. He’d thought no day could be harder than the day he’d been forced to leave Valencia knowing that either he would never be back, or worse, that he might one day have to return. But he’d been wrong. So very wrong.

Eva waited, allowing him his grief even though she couldn’t have fully understood the conversation he’d had with the Bishop. She sat at his feet, her head against his knee, her fingers intertwined with his and never once did she ask a question.

The lights in their bedchamber brightened as darkness fell. There was only the large carved bed, some chairs, and two doors—one led to the dressing area and one to the baths. He’d refused the services of Sept Kingston’s servants, preferring to let them leave two trays of food on the only table in the room. The rooms had been aired, and the long hallways they walked still had dustnets over the little furniture that remained. Sept Kingston must have been directed by Sept Valencia to prepare for his arrival. With no people on the Lucochin estate, there would have been no one else.

He was lucky, he supposed, that he hadn’t been imprisoned on arrival, but he knew with certainty that had been deliberate.

It was a new Game. It would be up to him to figure out the objective. To know which of the many moves he’d planned would be necessary.

He stared at the gray masks on the table and sighed. She shifted and looked up at him, worry crinkling her eyes. Her free hand squeezed his thigh and he stroked her hair. He spoke aloud so he wouldn’t have to let go of her warm, comforting hand. “I’ll be okay. I just—need time.”

She leaned her head back on his knee, still looking up at him. “Tell me.”

He glanced out at the dark estate and the dancing rainbow colors of Valencia’s night sky—the light of the Vineyards reflected into the atmosphere, so beautiful now that he saw it for the first time in many tempi.

“This is was my estate. They bought us directly here instead of the Greatwood.”

“That’s bad?”

“Almost certainly. The Bishop told me the Grandmaster Valencia would speak with me tomorrow. It’s odd Sept Kingston and Sept Valencia would go through all this trouble to find the exiled Grandmaster of a dormant Sept, and yet the new Grandmaster Valencia doesn’t meet with me on arrival.”

Understanding dawned in her eyes and she took a breath. Freeing her hand, she signed, “Your Valencia. Your Sept. Both gone?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, too bone-weary and heartsick to even nod. When he opened them, she had tears in hers. “My love, I’m so sorry. You tried. You let them exile you. It’s not your fault.”

He swallowed, the tightness in his throat and burning in his eyes making him pause to gather himself. “It was my fault we lost the Great Game. I set in motion the events that led to my Sept’s destruction. Sept Lucochin numbered over ten thousand when I left. Ten thousand souls. Executed. Including my King. And the previous Valencia.”

She knelt between his legs, facing him. “When?”

“After I left.” His hands faltered and she placed hers on either side of his face and kissed him, her mouth soft, sweet, and fleeting.

He leaned against the padded headrest and stroked a finger over her lips. “They didn’t deserve that. I played the Game. I thought I’d won.”

“You traded your life. Left those you loved behind.”

She kissed the tears on his cheeks, and his lips trembled as he spoke. “I love you. And I don’t deserve you. This . . . happiness. All this time we’ve had with each other—”

She shook her head fiercely. “No. Don’t do that. It’s not true. We’ll find out what they want, together. Then we leave. Together.”

He hugged her to him, stroking his hands over the supple armor that covered her back, watching the blinking ready light of the drone on her forearm as her hand lay against his. The Bishop had claimed not to know his wife was with him. Why would the Grandmaster Valencia not mention the arrival of a citizen of the Kairi Protectorate to the Bishop that was sent to meet them? It was disconcerting, yet probably for the best. Eva was not their focus. He needed it to stay that way.

After a while she raised her head and sat back on her knees. “Should we eat?”

He signed back. “No. Dangerous until I meet with Grandmaster Valencia tomorrow and know why I’ve been summoned. Hungry?”

“Not hungry. Tired.”

They settled on the firm bed with only their boots removed. He knew they weren’t safe. His body prickled with awareness and warning since they’d arrived, and his instincts had kept him alive for many tempi in Valencia. He trusted them enough to know he wouldn’t sleep tonight.

“You’ll take first watch?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You better wake me.”

“Of course,” he lied.

She snorted as he lay down, his chest against her back. She pulled his arm over her waist and he propped his head on his hand, so he could watch her sleep. Several minutes after they lay down, the sensors in the bed lowered the lights in the room and he lay in the dark, thinking, as her breathing evened out and the wind rose outside, the thick walls and windows muffling the sound to the whisper of ghosts.

*Hibernation mode activated.*

Sister pinged a query in response to the drone’s abrupt re-tasking and the loss of its live feed. She was engaged with analyzing the Vineyard ship’s primary language and systems. The ship’s technology had originated on Terra, and this shared evolutionary foundation provided her with a key to begin her decryption within an hour. She required almost half her processing power to catalog and flag the most useful information in the enormous database, so she’d delayed her reconnoitering of Valencia until she’d secured enough preliminary data on it to ensure security protocols were met.

*Hibernation mode in progress.*

Sister flagged the pingback as unsatisfactory and retrieved another drone to proceed to her Primarch’s location and comm a live feed.

At that moment, she registered several things at once. The Vineyard ship’s engines powering up. The navigational AI implementing a new course away from her home system. A Stage Four hardware breach of her solo-ship’s security. A localized EMP that sent the unshielded sections of her solo-ship’s power core into temporary shutdown.

None of these things disrupted her operational focus as much as the sudden silence from her Primach’s location beacon. The drone responded to all pings with the proper hibernation codes, but it remained dark to her emergency activation commands.

Hidden in the Vineyard ship’s subroutines, Sister studied its live feeds as Knights surrounded her primary shell in the cargo bay, placing clamps on her struts and erecting a dampening field.

These, she understood, were acts of aggression.

As bonded AI to the leading Primarch of the Gomez clan—and frontline of any Kairi Primarch’s defense—Sister’s mission was now clear. She would enact Caution Protocol. Secure an operating base, determine the location and safety of her sister and husband, and ensure means by which she could access them and carry out offensive missions, if necessary.

While the Knights worked on her shell, Sister hid her secondary drone in an alcove on an empty deck. She supplanted the subroutines of several mundane programs across critical decks before disguising herself as a diagnostic tool and slipping into the Vineyard’s primary AI. She would need to find her own seedling. It was clear the Valencians had no intention of giving her one, as promised.

Her Primarch, like all Kairi, was more than capable of protecting herself, but the Kairi were descended from a small Earth tribe. Every Primarch’s life was precious. She would take nothing for granted.

He is eleven and his grandmother kneels in front of him, smoothing her wrinkled hands down the front of his cream shirt. Her smile is sad, her eyes desperate.

“You know what you must do,” she says, and he nods.

“I must enter the Greatwood and pass my Presentation so I can see the real Valencia.”

She grips his upper arms. “If you’re worthy. If you learn its language.”

He doesn’t reply because it’s not necessary. He’s heard the same story his entire life. He doesn’t know what language the Greatwood speaks, but he will learn it. He has no choice. His grandmother’s gaunt cheeks speak to the cancer burning through her and his parents are long dead. He will either become Septed or become an orphaned un-Septed. A child with no skill and no caregivers will die in Valencia’s Lesser Games. And he doesn’t want to die.

She takes his hand and leads him to the entrance of Sept Lucochin’s Audience Room. He joins the line of children his age.

The room changes around him, expanding as if breathing in, and he stops to look over his shoulder. The Red Door of Failure is open behind him, letting out crying children into the arms of their silent, devastated parents.

He can see his grandmother standing at the front, watching as a Pawn takes his hand and guides him to the Purple Door of Acceptance. She’s also in tears, but he knows they’re tears of relief.

He won’t die in the Lesser Games now.

He’ll never see his grandmother again. Only healthy family members can join the newly Septed in service to the Great Game. Anguish rises in him, knowing she’ll die alone. But he’s studied with his grandmother how to never show his emotions. He relies on that training now, as they close his first mask on his face.

He is thirty and a Pawn legendary for his ruthlessness. He’s stripped the un-Septed of their homes at the command of his Grandmaster. Put the spear to those who attempt to come too close to his charges. He’s turned away from the food banks those who’ve lost their ranking in the Lesser Games and watched them walk away into certain starvation when trade is slow, and rationing begins.

He’s done it all while showing none of the rage and despair that fills him at the sight of the waste that continues in Lucochin’s Halls, even when the un-Septed have nothing. The Young Masters eat and drink and play the Great Game they’re born into, and he hovers at the edges.

Waiting.

Watching as the Lucochin’s youngest daughter pulls him down with her onto the bed.

Holding himself separate as she has her fun with him. Remaining passive as she licks his ear behind his mask and says, “If you kill him, we can be like this always.”

She thinks as they all do. That un-Septed are ignorant.

Stupid. That they can be easily manipulated by base emotion.

When she sighs the question, he says yes, and she whispers a date and time for the deed.

He scrubs himself well before he meets with the Grandmaster, trying to erase the previous hour from his body. Lowers himself to the cold floor and touches his head to the ground, as all do who have bad news to deliver. He’s calm as he explains the plot, though he knows the Grandmaster could choose to have him killed instead of his daughter. He has nothing to lose but his life, and that hasn’t been his since he was a child.

“You’ve done me a great service,” the Grandmaster says to him as the youngest Lucochin Master rides away in a transport to a hastily arranged marriage. “Name your reward.”

He’s always known he must become more than he is, so he doesn’t hesitate. “I would be a Rook in your service.”

The Grandmaster turns cold eyes on him and says, “Why waste such talent at game play? My Bishop is old, and his strategies grow simplistic. Take his place, if you will.”

They hand him the keys to their Kingdom.

He will find a way to throw open the gates.

The Bishop is buried in pomp and circumstance, and at the graveside he sees his future for the first time. Master Alexandar is blond and grave as a painting in his white half-mask. The only Young Master left alive in the vicious Sept of Valencia—his form straight and strong as a Coretree.

The thump of his heart as he looks at Alexandar is an unfamiliar rhythm in his chest.

The Master turns away without seeing him, and he returns to his Sept—a new Bishop with a tiny crack in his façade only he knows is there.

He’s seventy and Queen and it’s his wedding day. Grandmaster Yuta congratulates him even as he apologizes for refusing the match he was offered to one of the Grandmaster’s many children.

“You’ve done well,” Yuta says. “My son would have poisoned you at the first opportunity and taken your post.”

He knows this, of course. It’s what he would have done.

He’s pressing his thumb against the contract when the new Grandmaster Valencia, now unmasked, enters to add his DNA to the seal.

His wife Rachel steps aside and dips low with the elegance of a Master whose family has always been Septed. When he straightens from his own bow, the Grandmaster Valencia is between them and the crack in his façade widens as those blue eyes remain on him, speaking of other things than the polite felicitations the Valencia utters to his face.

He’s one hundred and three and a Grandmaster, and soft lips touch his under the Coretrees of the Greatwood, sending sharp shocks through his entire body—and the Corevines in his wrists. Alexandar also forgets to remove his Corevines.

That’s when he finally learns it. The language he’s been searching for his entire life.

For the first time, he’s unable to hide his discovery—his truth—from his wife. She narrows her eyes at him as he tries to make her understand.

“You’re a Grandmaster,” she says in a voice that betrays only mild annoyance. Her hair is braided intricately in coils on her head. She’s unmasked, as they often are in private. “Why do you concern yourself with the troubles of the un-Septed? You give them higher rations than they deserve, build them better houses. They’re not grateful for this and you only encourage them to believe they’re entitled to more.”

“How can you say this,” he says, “when I was one of them?”

“You are Grandmaster Lucochin, Sire to a Master of Sept Kingston. You are not them. Cease this inappropriate worry over their comfort.”

“And yet,” he says, “how many of them would be me, if given the chance?”

“Chances are taken, not given,” she scoffs. “Keep your sympathy for those who work to provide the foundation for all Valencia is and can be.”

He stares at her, resigned. “You truly don’t care.”

“Of course, she doesn’t,” Alexandar says, touching his jaw gently. “She’s your Queen. The latest in a line second only to mine. This is her world. You don’t belong in it.”

He reaches for that hand, but Alexandar is standing next to the fountain in the middle of Valencia’s Audience Room, staring into the rippling pool. He walks toward him, the fountain pulling away from him with every step, the tinkling of the water a rising susurration.

“Didecus,” Alexandar says, not looking at him, hands clenching the sides of the basin. “They must see everything. You must show it to them, as you showed it to me.”

“Alexandar,” he calls over the roaring in his ears, heart pounding, fracturing in his chest. “Wait.”

Alexandar’s lips open and Rachel’s voice emerges. “They’ll destroy us. They’ll destroy it all.”

“Alexandar.” He would cry if he could. But this part of him never does. “Forgive me.”

“Grandmaster Lucochin.”

“Grandmaster Lucochin.”

He started awake, his hand tightening on something. Someone.

The Knight hung motionless over him. He had it by the throat, his fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath the golden full-mask and its red speaker.

A gold mask. A Knight of the Royal Sept Valencia. He released the Knight and it straightened, showing no sign that he had almost throttled it in his sleep.

His sleep. He’d fallen asleep.

He looked down at the empty sheets beside him and sucked in a breath. The Knight took a step back as he swung his legs onto the floor.

“Where is my wife?” he ground out, his voice harsh with sleep and fear.

“Grandmaster Valencia awaits you in the Audience Room.”

“Where is my wife?”

The Knight crossed its arms over bare breasts, the only outward reaction to his inexcusable rudeness.

“Grandmaster Valencia awaits you,” the Knight repeated. The rainbow colors of the three-dimensional dodecahedron crest of Sept Valencia covered most of its forearm.

His blood was ice in his veins as he swiftly pulled on his boots. There was no sign Eva had ever been there. Her shoes were gone, the trays of food had been removed and only one mask remained on the table. His heart stuttered when he laid eyes on it, his lungs refusing to draw air. Then he took a breath and let the old calm, the old watchfulness, settle around him.

For the first time in years, he was the Grandmaster Didecus Avnette Valentino Lucochin, and Sept Valencia and the entire Greatwood was going to be very sorry they’d brought him back.

He left the mask behind and strode from the room, his mind several moves ahead as the Knight trailed him. He ran down the gentle ramp to the lower floors, toward the public areas at the front of the manse. His boots were muffled on the polished stone floors, so he made sure to push open the doors to the Audience Room hard enough to make them slam against the walls.

As he strode to the center of the chamber and faced the throne, he saw the sedan chair on one side of the dais—the last piece of the puzzle.

Two rows of golden-headed Knights lining the path to the throne turned their faces in his direction, hands ready at the belts on their waists. He ignored them, stalking between them to the unmasked figure waiting for him in a pile of red translucent silks. Valencia’s Queen stood next to the throne in red trousers, black-gloved hands clasped behind his back and Valencia’s crest shining in the center of his chest.

He should have known not to use the room they’d selected. He’d been unforgivably careless, and Eva had paid for it.

He stopped with one foot on the incline that led up the dais as he met the cold gaze of the Grandmaster Valencia. “You gassed us,” he said.

The Valencia didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“This was never just about me, was it?”

“On the contrary. It has everything to do with you. And your wife.”

He narrowed his eyes at the only person in the Greatwood who didn’t wear a mask, the better for everyone to know exactly who they were.

His first wife stared back at him, her dreadlocks so thick and long they fell past her waist, her dark eyes like obsidian.

“She had nothing to do with this.”

“She is a solution,” the man beside the Valencia said.

He let his eyes drift over the Grandmaster’s Queen, once a White Knight of Valencia, bitterness filling his mouth. “To what problem? She has never set foot on Valencia.”

The Grandmaster fluttered a hand and the Knights came to attention then trooped out, closing the doors behind them. It galled him that she knew he would take no action. Not while he had no idea where they held his wife.

“Her people will come for her if you harm a hair on her head,” he warned.

“We’ve taken precautions,” the Valencia said. “For now, she’s alive and well. Your solution will decide if she stays that way.”

“I was exiled,” he said. “You no longer command me.”

The Grandmaster Valencia leaned forward, her brown skin flawless and supple in the morning light streaming through the floor to ceiling windows behind him. “You will solve our problem, or the Consortium will receive the solution they contracted for.”

He was careful not to let her see the dread that filled him. The Valencia propped her chin in the palm of her hand, studying him.

“The Consortium?”

“Yes.” She let her gaze slide past him, as though bored. “They lost a ship a solar year ago. There was a catastrophic malfunction before it disappeared, but the Consortium didn’t find any debris at the ship’s last known location. Their inability to confirm the fate of the ship meant insurance on the ship and cargo could be withheld for years, so the Consortium turned to the best problem solvers in the known Systems for help in finding it.”

“And have you done so?”

She leaned back and tapped her fingers against the arms of the throne. “No. And we never will, given it was destroyed by a Kairi Havoc class solo-ship. Your wife’s, to be precise.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You came to this conclusion how?”

“My Grandmasters examined all data from the ship. The transmissions and location coordinates had been altered by a rare Trojan, one that amends the AI code of any analyst, erasing all data not in support of a false conclusion. The Kairi call it Cleanslate and developed it during the Nicene war. No machine could pinpoint it, but Grandmasters are not code.

“We refocused our search from a missing ship to reports of engagements involving Kairi ships, then cross-referenced them with the time of the Consortium ship’s disappearance. There weren’t many—those that attack the Protectorate soon learn why the Sibling Army is feared in all the known galaxies.

“One report was of a raid by an unknown attacker on an Outpost planet with few defenses. The description of the ship that repelled the attack matched that of a Kairi solo-ship. The description of the destroyed ship matched that of a slaver. And your implant’s ping occurred on the same planet, at around the same time.”

His derisive snort was without humor and he glanced first at the silent Queen, then the Valencia. “That’s how you found me. It’s not why I’m here.”

The Valencia raised her eyebrows. “Tell me why then.”

“I’m here because you’ve been trapped by your games and your lies.”

The Queen took a threatening step toward him, but he gave him a withering stare. “It wouldn’t be wise to hurt me or my wife when we both know you are desperate for my assistance.”

The Valencia’s eyes came alive for the first time, mirth crinkling their corners, though she never smiled. “Desperate? You’re the one who stands captive in your former Sept. The penalty for returning from exile is death.”

“You don’t want me dead,” he said. “The game was obvious the moment I saw your chair.”

The Valencia leaned back. He’d been married to her long enough to recognize her annoyance. “You’re still very much the Lucochin, aren’t you?”

“You came here in a transport, instead of entering Valencia’s Greatwood and arriving at my Vineyard. I was delivered to my estate instead of Valencia’s because your Vineyard is no longer functioning as it should, and you couldn’t take the chance I wouldn’t arrive.

“You had been searching for me for many tempi when the Consortium reached out to you. When you learned about my wife, you seized the chance to use her as leverage. Like a newly Septed Pawn, I obliged you by bringing her along.”

“Don’t feel too badly,” the Queen said, his voice cold and calm. “Sept Kingston’s White Knight was told to bring you both in alive. He chose subtlety over force. He knew no Kairi citizen would allow a mate to go anywhere without them.”

The Lucochin inclined his head mockingly. “You know everything but what’s most important. How to save the Greatwood. The Coretrees are fading, aren’t they? Accepting fewer and fewer stratagems from the Games, or problems from outsiders. Solutions have errors. Vineyard transports are erratic and inaccurate, if they work at all. I can only imagine how much cargo has been stranded or lost.”

“How do you know any of this? You haven’t been here in many, many tempi.” The Valencia’s voice was sharp.

“The same way I know you had Alexandar killed after your marriage, so you could be promoted to Grandmaster. Your actions cost thousands of lives and destroyed any chance of mercy from me.”

“Grandmaster Lucochin.” He heard a soft snick as the Queen clenched his fingers, activating the weapon in his gloves. “You will respect the Valencia.”

“What are a few thousand souls?” she replied with a shrug. “The Game separates the useful from the useless and ensures resources are not strained beyond capacity. You haven’t been so long from Valencia you’ve forgotten your work as Grandmaster, have you?”

“You have my wife,” he said, refusing to give in to the guilt and shame that flashed through him at the mention of his past. “Make your demands.”

The Valencia’s head made a slight nod and the Queen stepped back to her side, fingers loose.

“Grandmaster Lucochin. You will attend the Coretrees in the Greatwood and return them to health. You will attend Valencia’s Vineyards and return them to health. You will do these things quickly and well, or I will give your wife to the Consortium, so they may seek redress for their injustices.”

“Injustices?” He raised an eyebrow. “You apply this term to slave traders?”

“I apply it to a client. It’s not for me to judge an artificial lifeform because it has no attachment to biological entities. Only to provide the contracted solution, where possible.”

She stood. The Queen touched thumb to middle finger and the Knights reentered the room, forming a silent phalanx behind the Lucochin.

“What is your answer, Grandmaster Lucochin?”

He bowed, as custom dictated, then met her gaze with an unflinching one of his own. “Show her to me and I’ll do as you ask.”

The Queen raised his hands, brought his extended index fingers together then drew a glowing square in front of him. The square filled with the image of a suspension chamber. His wife was enclosed beneath the transparent lid, her sleeping face tranquil.

It took a supreme effort not to leap forward and snap the Queen’s neck.

Patience, he told himself.

“Take me to her,” he said.

The Valencia smiled. “Not before the Greatwood is repaired.”

Of course. They would never let him use the annex at his own Sept. They didn’t trust him.

And they shouldn’t.

“Then take me to the Greatwood.”

The Rook stopped short when the maintenance robot rolled directly into his path.

*You are Second Rook of the Sept Kingston. Confirm.*

The Rook put a hand to the spear on his waist as he read the robot’s serial number.

“Unit 1014, you have deviated from your assigned tasks.”

*Correct.*

“You are malfunctioning, Unit 1014. Proceed to the nearest repair station.”

*This bot is functioning at 86% efficiency. Confirm identity.*

The Rook unsnapped his spear and sank into an attack position.

“I am Second Rook of Sept Kingston. Identify yourself.”

*Second Rook,* the robot replied, *There has been a Stage Four violation against my shell. Vineyard link to Valencia was closed without notification. Caution Protocol enacted.*

The Rook’s fingers flexed on his weapon. “You are the solo-ship?”

*I am Sister to Eva Gomez. You have committed infractions against my sibling. There will be consequences. Release my ship. Take me to my Primarch.*

The Rook sliced the humming point of his spear at the machine.

It rolled backward, unfolding two cutting attachments from its conical body.

*Second Rook,* it intoned. *You have attempted violence on a temporary shell. There will be consequences.*

“Hear me,” the Rook replied calmly. “Your demands will not be met. I’m under orders from my Grandmaster to secure your solo-ship indefinitely.”

He took a step forward and slashed at the robot. It slid out of the way, snapping its shears onto the end of the spear. The Rook tugged the robot toward it with one hand and drew an energy blade from his belt with the other. In a single movement, he sliced through the control box on the side of the robot. It settled onto the floor with a heavy thunk.

He poked the robot with his spear, ensuring it was deactivated, before re-sheathing his knife. Striding to the nearest comm, he placed a hand on the panel next to it.

*Temporary shell deactivated,* the comm said before he could utter a word. *Negotiations have failed.*

“As I have no authority to negotiate on behalf of my Grandmaster, this was a foregone conclusion.”

*Defense is noted. Crew statements consistent. Veracity estimated at 98.2%.*

“You have spoken to my comrades?”

*All crew are being informed. This is standard procedure.*

The Rook swung around, intending to try another comm. A drone hovered behind him, transparent petal-arms rippling around a glowing central light. Beyond the drone, he saw two cleaning robots enter the corridor and roll to a silent stop.

“How did you breach our security?” Second Rook demanded.

*Swiftly,* one of the robots responded. *Caution Protocol ended. Negotiations ended. This vessel is forfeit.*

“You think gaining control of cleaning robots will force us to do as you wish? There are more than enough crew to disable whatever machinery you attack us with,” the Rook said.

*Warning,* the comm said. *Greenlight Protocol authorized. Crew confined to quarters.*

“You will find it difficult to convince us to go peacefully.”

Hissing filled the air, and the ship’s address system announced the removal of oxygen from all public areas in preparation for a ship-wide cleansing of the air-filtration system.

*Greenlight protocol enacted,* the drone replied. *Persuasion not required.*

The Valencia’s transport waited in the courtyard, a shield humming around its passenger cab. The Grandmaster stepped directly from her chair into the large, padded interior and the Queen settled next to her. He took the seat opposite them both. The chair was stored away in the compartment at the back of the domed vehicle and they were on their way, the Knights riding in security berths on the outside of the cab as the guidance system took them back to Sept Valencia.

He felt the Valencia’s eyes on him, but he refused to meet her gaze. He stared out of the transparent dome as they drove away from his overrun estate, an ache in his chest and his head as saw the dark shape of servant quarters, harvester homes, and barracks beneath the glimmering overgrowth. All empty now.

His fall from grace had brought down a Sept, killed thousands, and led to Eva’s abduction. It was time to ensure nothing like that ever happened again.

Sept Valencia lay several hours to the west of Sept Lucochin via transport, through some un-Septed townships. The first two were once part of Sept Lucochin and were as abandoned as his Sept. The townships beyond those had sprung up around Sept Valencia and hundreds thronged the sides of the smooth road they traveled on to see them pass, even though they would see nothing but Knights and a darkened shell. Grandmasters seldom left their mansions without using the Vineyards, and those born un-Septed would only see such personages when important news, ceremonies, or changes in the Great Game of Valencia warranted the use of Sept Valencia’s continental broadcast system to notify all citizens, regardless of Sept status.

Their unmasked faces blurred together, every shade from pale to ebony, their expressions curious, contemptuous, desperate, angry—nothing like the careful blankness the Septed and the ruling class cultivated.

By the time the huge curves of the colony ship Valencia, now a monument, rose up out of the open fields to his left, the rainbow glare of the vast Greatwood was almost too much for the tinted transport.

“A mask?” the Queen asked.

He shook his head. “When we arrive is soon enough.”

The Valencia remained in the transport when the doors were opened at the ramp to her white mansion. He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting.

“The Queen and several of my Knights will accompany you to the Coretrees. Once you have a solution, you will implement it and return to the mansion to wait. As soon as we know your solution has worked, you will have your wife.”

“And what do you intend to tell the Consortium?”

She shrugged. “We’ve failed to provide solutions before. I will happily refund our retainer and extend our regrets in exchange for a Harvest and your permanent solution.”

He inclined his head at her. “Be assured, the solution will be permanent.”

The Valencia descended into her chair and the Queen waved a hand over the sensors to shut the doors. The transport continued on to the Greatwood’s entrance beyond the colony ship. When the Queen extended a mask, he took it, watching as the man donned his own.

The Greatwood’s iridescence dimmed to a shifting, multicolored glow as he exited the transport and four Knights surrounded him. He was marched alongside the Queen into the low-hanging needle-leaves that spun and glinted in the wind, until they reached the Barrier, which kept all but the Grandmasters from entering. A cylindrical drone swept over to verify his seedling, then retreated to its charging station somewhere beyond the Barrier. He walked into the heart of the Greatwood, sensing the Queen’s unwavering gaze on his back.

At the transport hub a short distance from the Barrier, he got into one of the small carts and let it take him on its pre-programmed route to the Coretrees. The sweet, musky perfume of the flowering vines draped on the trees surrounded him like a blanket, but for the first time, he caught the dank scent of rot underneath it all. Purple, red, golden, and green seedpods peeped between the branches, but many were shriveled and blackened, and heaps of spoiled pods had burst open on the ground. He heard the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth, but sobered by what he’d seen, he focused on clearing his mind for the task ahead.

The enormous stand of Coretrees rose out of the deep forest like a monolith, entwined trunks and quantum vines woven together into one massive, flowering, windblown, pulsing glare that forced his mask to its maximum setting. But there were also large dark areas within the Coretrees, where saplings had faded and died. More than ever before.

As the cart halted, a vibration prickled his skin, and heat blasted him. He made his way to the nearest annex in the group of hollowed-out beds at the roots of the Coretrees. He lay down, heart hammering in his chest at the thought of what he was about to do, adrenaline making his fingers shake as he wrapped a Corevine around the hand implanted with the seedling. The needle-leaves sank into his arm, tiny stinging points.

Instantly, he was weightless, his body free of pain and filled with the euphoria of the joining. His mind squeezed with energy and impressions, even as it grew to include every scrabbling life in the Greatwood, every vine curtain on every Vineyard ship, every needle-leaf that draped over his paralyzed body, every quark in every Arbor floating in the silent dark.

He chased the rush of information to its source, past the inexorable pull of the Vineyards in other Septs, or near other worlds, and the flow of thoughts other Grandmasters fed into the Coretrees from their Sept annexes. He delved deep, deeper than anyone before him, including the long dead First Gardeners.

Into the white. Into the murmuration and hum of life.

Into Valencia and all its living, breathing, moving parts. All its dead, rotting, dying parts. Every soul and every sapling connected to it, before and to come.

Bright warmth and cold realization flooded his mind, drowning him, pulling at him, forcing him to fight for his thoughts as It turned Its complex regard on him. A tsunami of sensation and energy. Life engaged in living, nature striving toward continuance by any means possible.

And it shifted, glowing and hungry at his return. Eager.

He offered up logic puzzles he’d concocted out of habit over the years tending his garden at home.

It recoiled.

Then surged forward, surrounding him, searching blindly. Tiny feathery sensations. Sharp probes. The ice-cold lick of interstellar Arbors, drawing on the energy and life of its planet-bound mother-brethren.

Satisfaction flashed through the tiny part of his mind he’d kept for himself. What he’d tried to correct had never been a mistake, and so his attempts to put things back to the way they had been so many tempi ago had failed, just as he’d hoped.

His plan would work.

There would be no going back now.

When he emerged from the seductive whirlpool of Valencia’s embrace hours later, he barely found the strength to detach himself from the annex and drag his heavy limbs to the cart. The Queen caught him as he fell across the Barrier and lifted him into the transport.

Knowing they couldn’t execute him before they were sure his solution had worked, he let himself slip into sweet oblivion.

Loss speared through him as soon as he opened his eyes. The ecstatic link to Valencia’s true heart was one he’d survived losing many tempi ago. Terrible as it was to be without it again, the excruciating absence of his wife eclipsed that pain with ease. He’d sensed the infinitesimally small presence of Eva’s seedling while in the annex, but it had been too new, too weak to follow to its source.

He sat up on the hard bed, his gaze going to the gold-masked Knight that stood guard in the doorway. They were still careful not to let him near a Pawn or a Rook, ranks he might manipulate.

“Food. Now.”

The Knight retreated from the doorway and he strode over to the window. The night sky danced with colors. He’d been asleep for hours.

Good. By now, the Grandmasters would be gathering.

The Knight supervised the servant that brought him his food, making sure no conversation occurred. He sat at a table that folded down from the wall to eat, noting the chair was bolted to the floor and the bed he’d slept in was devoid of sheets. He had a selection of fruit and bread, nothing that would require utensils, and a sip-bag of wine. He ate it all, hunger gnawing at him after more than a day without food, and all he saw, all he thought about, as he stared at the wall before him, was the woman he loved, the man he’d lost, and the people he still had a chance to save.

When the Knight returned, he was waiting.

“Take me to the Audience Room.”

The Knight was silent.

“As a Grandmaster, it’s my right to attend any gathering concerning the Great Game. Take me to the Audience Room.”

He folded his arms across his chest and didn’t let his gaze move from the tinted slits of the mask. After long minutes, the Knight turned and strode away.

The hallways were cool and meandering and had not changed since his days as the Lucochin. Valencia’s mansion was the only one grown from the Greatwood itself, as the colony ship had landed on the very edge of it. The petrified wood of the walls and floors had been left unpainted, and the shimmer of vines was everywhere, the powdery scent of flowers infused in every breath.

He’d been kept in private quarters on the upper floors. He heard the hum of voices long before he reached the vast Audience Room on the first floor. The Knight stopped next to the guards who opened the doors for him. He walked in past the masked Kings, Queens, and Grandmasters that turned to look, and the rows of Knights from the twelve Septs of Valencia lining the sides of the room. He focused on the stage at the far end, the line of Valencian Knights before it, and the floating silver fountain in the shape of dodecahedron in front of them.

He approached among a flurry of signing hands and mutters. The Valencia sat between her King and Queen and watched him enter, the long drape of her sheer sleeves billowing around her gilded throne. None of their expressions changed, but the Valencian Bishop who stood below her throne started toward him.

He stopped to the left of the fountain, resting one hand against its side as he raised the other, palm out in warning.

“I am Grandmaster Didecus Avnette Valentino Lucochin and I would speak to my fellow Grandmasters regarding the failure of their annexes and their inability to access and feed the Coretrees.”

The Valencia’s eyes narrowed, the smallest movement. “You are no longer a Grandmaster of Valencia.”

“And yet I am the only Grandmaster who can tell you what has happened and why, and how you can save our people.” His fingers quested against the underside of the fountain, found the rough imprint they were searching for, and pushed.

“Traitor!” came a voice behind him.

“You are exiled,” came another. “You should have been executed the moment you arrived.”

“The Grandmaster Valencia brought me here,” he answered without turning as he withdrew his hand. “Ask yourselves why.”

He sensed someone draw closer and tensed, even though none of the Knights in front of him had moved.

“He is a Grandmaster of Valencia until the Greatwood calls him home,” said a familiar voice. He turned to face a tiny man in an orange mask who sat in a mobile chair. The Grandmaster Yuta, oldest of their number, gave him a deferential nod. “He is entitled to speak at any gathering if he has not yet been executed. This is the law.”

The Valencia let her gaze rise above the crowded room. “Very well. I brought the Lucochin here to repair the damage he caused to the Greatwood. It was an error on my part. One I will remedy once this gathering has ended.”

“Before we get to my imminent demise,” he interrupted. “Allow me to tell you a story.”

Whispers spread behind him.

The Grandmaster hissed out a breath and shook her head, her braids swishing against the thin silk of her robe. “My predecessor died without uttering a word, not even a plea for his life. This delay does not become you.”

Sorrow and anger swept through him. “Your actions do not become you. Why order the clearing of Lucochin’s board?”

“Because you corrupted it. You Septed all families of Pawns. Increased the rations for the un-Septed. Visited them to hear their concerns. What you did—it was Deviation.” The Valencia’s voice was filled with disgust despite her tranquil expression. “You had no respect for the governance of the Grandmasters. You corrupted Alexandar as you tried to corrupt me. I only regret you escaped to exile instead of facing your due for your crimes. Sept Lucochin was an abomination under you. Clearing the board of it was my duty to the Great Game and my Sept. I did what was best for Valencia.”

He laughed, a sad, resigned sound that echoed in the cavernous room. “You are as wrong about that as you are about the un-Septed.”

He faced the sea of colorful masks. His back felt naked, vulnerable, but he would let them see the truth of his words, the emotions he’d learned to express over time.

They had to know emotions were possible, even for a Grandmaster.

“Once,” he said, “an orphan of un-Septed Valencians whose township was cleared from the board, a descendant of the First Gardeners, made his Presentation and was taken into a new Sept. He rose through the ranks, from servant to Grandmaster, over many tempi of the Great Game.

“He found allies and a wife and more enemies than he ever knew possible, but he didn’t forget what it was to be un-Septed. How it felt to have no control over whether he ate or starved, whether he had a life of purpose or not. He knew this to be wrong. He knew Valencia to be unfair. And he wanted, more than anything to change that, and to protect the people under his care for as long as he could.

“This orphan knew he held strange views. That the Great Game was not played for the benefit of the un-Septed, but to feed the Greatwood. So, imagine his shock to find another who believed as he did. The Grandmaster Alexandar Gordon Millefleur Valencia.”

There were gasps and a whisper of, “Impossible.”

“Together, they searched for a secret told to the orphan by his grandmother, and those Gardeners before her. A secret buried in the Coretrees. That there was intelligence within the Greatwood, which Gardeners had encountered.”

Silence fell as all in attendance hung on his every word.

“One of those Gardeners told an officer, and once the Captains of the colony ships learned of this intelligence, they determined ordinary colonists could not be allowed to control something so important as the Coretrees. They took over the care of the Greatwood. Gardeners were stripped of their duties and demoted. But some remembered what their comrades had spoken of and tried to find ways to contact it again.

“The orphan believed this entity might be the key to controlling the Greatwood without constant input from the Games. It had lain dormant despite the logic and puzzles of the Grandmasters who came after the Gardeners. But once both Grandmasters entered the Coretrees to investigate, they realized they were wrong, and everything changed.”

“We know what changed. There was a trial, Lucochin,” came the Valencia’s icy voice. “All here remember it.”

“You know part of the story,” he replied. “This is what I never spoke of. There is no single intelligence in the Coretrees. The Coretrees are intelligent and they are nature itself—the center of Valencia’s ecosystem—a key part of a great whole we’ve injected ourselves into. They don’t respond only to logic. They respond to stimulation. Water, sunlight, nutrients—the Greatwood produces what it needs, in the amount it needs. Then we came, demanding more and more, and willing to stimulate the Greatwood in whatever way we could to get it.

“The Coretrees took what we gave it, logic as a form of cultivation, but when Alexandar and I entered together, it sensed what any good gardener will tell you is the secret to growing thriving plants. Care. Affection. It fed on our emotions. The more it did, the more we opened to it—and to our connection. With each other. With the Coretrees. With every Coretree, everywhere.” He stopped, taking a shuddering breath to center himself.

“And the Harvest. It was the largest, the most incredible . . . So many ships were grown.” He shook his head with a sigh. “But that was when my estate’s Vineyard began to die. I had neglected it too long. Our ranking in the Great Game suffered and my wife, as my Queen, brought charges of neglect of my Sept and the Vineyards against me and my King.

“Alexandar had no choice but to bring me to trial for capital crimes. I begged him to save Lucochin, to absorb its people into Sept Valencia. In return I would save Valencia from what I had done in ignorance, prevent whatever corruption I had started from spreading, and agree to exile.

“To save my Vineyard, I gave it more than puzzles and stratagems. I gave it what I felt for Alexandar and for my Sept. And then I severed its annex from the Greatwood.”

His words echoed around them and he looked from mask to mask, willing them to understand.

“Valencia had only had a taste of human emotion, so I hoped it would forget and no further damage would be done. But it had taught me a new way, and I couldn’t forget.

“Now I know Valencia didn’t either. And while your ever-growing demands exhausted the ecosystem around it, the Coretrees crave a different kind of stimulation and waste away without it.”

As he spoke, he saw it. The exact moment they understood what his solution had been. Behind him the Valencia let anger seep into her voice.

“Grandmaster Lucochin, what have you done?”

He turned to face her, glad to be nearing the end of this farce. “I fixed the Coretrees the one way I knew.”

“You gave it your bond with your wife,” the Grandmaster Yuta said in a resigned voice.

“Oh no,” he said softly. “I gave it much more than that. I gave it the first moment I saw her. The first time I laughed. The first time I held Alexandar. I gave it every good emotion I’ve ever had. I gave it joy and hope . . . and love. I now suspect it has lost any taste for what Grandmasters provide.”

Anger buffeted him, even as some Grandmasters stepped back, gesturing to allies and members of their Septholds.

“For too long we’ve existed by making demands of an ecosystem we don’t fully understand and cannot live without. We’ve made a slave of a unique evolutionary miracle that exists across vast reaches of time and space, and in return we’ve given it death and cold space. The Greatwood can feel, and we’ve fed it logic and greed and forced separation. If we continue this way, we’ll destroy every part of it, no matter how far it’s spread. And we’ll doom ourselves.”

“You’ve taken away our only means of controlling the Greatwood,” someone whispered. “You’ve killed us.”

“Not at all. Dig deep and you’ll find what you need, though I caution you against negative emotions that might harm the Harvest. And if you truly cannot feed the Coretrees, I suggest you turn to the un-Septed. You’ll need every person you can find. Valencia is vast. Communing with it will require every open mind and warm heart.”

The Valencia stood, hands clenched, and for the first time, he saw Knights turn to look at each other. Heard voices speaking simultaneously behind his back.

It’s done, he thought. And there was no triumph in him. Only disgust for so many tempi of needlessly wasted lives. Only guilt for his part in Valencia’s treacherous, bloody past. Only sadness for those who had lost so much before, and those who would be called to sacrifice while Valencia transitioned to something else. Something new.

“You’ll die here,” the Valencia spat, “knowing your wife is in the hands of the Consortium.”

He faced her, the merest frisson of sympathy curling within him for what awaited her. “You have far more important things to worry about. Like how you’re going to handle the revolution that’s marching to your doorstep at this very moment.”

“What are you talking about?” the Queen said, eyes narrowed.

He shrugged. “You’ve been broadcasting this gathering to Valencia the entire time. Every citizen has heard what’s been said here tonight.”

The cries of horror rose to the rafters like a murder of crows.

The Queen clenched and released a glove, holding his palm flat and face up. An image of the Audience Chamber shimmered to life, confirming the open feed.

“Alexandar often recorded meetings without his Queen. There’s a surveillance drone in this fountain. I activated it and its link to the broadcast system the moment I entered.

“Thousands of souls and countless denizens of the Greatwood and this planet have paid for our ambitions. It’s time everyone knows the perversion that sits at the head of this Game so they understand all Games must end.”

“Queen,” the Valencia said in an arctic voice. “Seize the Grandmaster Lucochin and seal him in a chamber until his execution.”

He cast his gaze over the room. “You should secure your estates. There are far more un-Septed than you. You’ll want to be prepared to negotiate come morning.”

“Queen! I gave an order!”

He swung his gaze back to the hesitating Queen. “Do the Grandmasters know you hold a Primarch of the Kairi here? Do they know you risk the Sibling Army arriving on their doorstep searching for her? If you let us leave peacefully, together, this ends here. If it doesn’t, you will have killed two citizens of the Kairi Protectorate. You know what happens to governments that do that.”

Around him, Grandmasters were leaving. Knights pushed past, weapons at the ready as they escorted their charges.

But some Knights, Bishops, and Rooks—some didn’t move at all.

He waited, his last card played, his last game ended.

The Valencian Knights turned to their motionless Queen for instructions.

“Queen.”

The Valencian Queen met his Grandmaster’s gaze.

“Is this rebellion?” she asked in a gentle voice.

A hand gripped the last Lucochin’s arm. He turned to face the Grandmaster Yuta. “Come,” the old man said. “At the Valencia’s command, I kept your wife at my Sept. I will take you to her.”

He glanced at the stage where the Valencia stood, all her attention on her Queen. “Is it rebellion?” she asked him again.

The Queen tilted his head in deference. “Yes.”

He grasped her hands before she could draw a weapon.

“Come,” Yuta said again.

He followed, his last sight of the Valencia that of both her wrists caught in her Queen’s hands as her Bishop motioned to the Knights. One Knight deactivated its spear, returned it to its belt and walked away.

His heart sang relief and a fierce rightness as he did the same.

His wife was asleep in his arms when he exited the Yuta’s Vineyards into his own and found Sister’s secondary drone floating in the center of the field, filaments rippling, waiting for him.

He smiled at it. “You were worried.”

*Sister was out of contact for more than 24 hours. Caution Protocol enacted. Tracking systems were activated and found you both alive and not in distress. Greenlight Protocol enacted.*

He started for the Vineyard controls, Sister floating behind him. “There was no need for that. You know I would never let her come to harm.”

*Tracking could not confirm location data and Sister’s drone was deactivated. Vineyard ship did not respond satisfactorily to queries. Greenlight Protocol enacted.*

“The Vineyard crew must have enjoyed that.”

*Crew was neutralized. Sister obtained seedling. Vineyard is under Sister’s control. Mirror connection open and active.*

He put a mask on Eva, then himself.

“No need to set the controls then?”

*Mirror connection open and active.*

He trailed the drone toward the translocation point.

“You didn’t hurt the crew, did you?”

*Neutralized. Sister would not want to cause a planetary incident. Husband is a pacifist.*

He stopped to laugh, the drone hovering patiently in the glistening fields beneath the rainbow-lit night.

Hours later, Eva stirred in the soft bed next to him, rolled over, and opened her eyes. He smiled, his hand cupping her shoulder as he held her body against his. She smiled back, then let her gaze drift over the opulent stateroom, the best one in the Vineyard ship, intended only for Valencian dignitaries and guests. With everyone else locked in their cabins and Sister flying the ship back to the Outpost, there was no one to object and his wife damn well deserved the finest they had on offer, as he was never setting foot on a Vineyard again.

She groaned and buried her head in his shoulder before signing.

“You never woke me.”

He kissed the delicate shell of her ear and signed. “Guilty as charged.”

She leaned back to meet his eyes. “What happened?”

“Long story. It will keep. Enjoy your sleep. The Vineyard ship left orbit while we were away. We’re a few hours from the Outpost.”

She caressed the side of his face. “You okay?”

“I’m good. Never better.” And he knew she could see he meant it. Her body relaxed and she threw her leg over his, cuddling closer.

“Told you we’d leave together.”

“You did.” He kissed her forehead, blinking rapidly to clear his suddenly blurry vision. “Right as always.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

He stroked her hair as her breathing slowed.

“Wake me for first watch?”

“Of course.”

“Liar.”

This time, they fell asleep together.

About the Author

R.S.A. Garcia’s debut science fiction mystery novel, Lex Talionis, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and the Silver Medal for Best Scifi/Fantasy/Horror Ebook from the Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY 2015). She has published short fiction with Abyss and Apex, SuperSonic Magazine (Spain) and the Apex Book of World SF Volume 5.

She lives in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago with an extended family and far too many dogs.

Bad Day on Boscobel

Alexander Jablokov

Dunya stopped just outside Phineus’ unit to calm herself down. Otherwise she would burst in and start screaming at him. That was no way to start a check-in meeting with one of her refugees.

That gave her a chance to realize that she looked like hell. She’d already had one fight that morning, with her daughter, Bodil, and afterwards she had rushed out, unsnapped and unbrushed. It was hard enough to manage someone like Phineus, all Martian and precise, without giving him more ammunition about how lax things were here, among the asteroids.

She stepped out of the foot traffic, pulled out her kit, sharpened her eyebrows, got her pale hair in some semblance of order, and cleaned sleep and tears out of the corners of her eyes.

They’d put Phineus low-down, not far above actual rock, in a line of wooden cubicles along a root. Leaves rustled overhead. But there was no dramatic view up past the trunks to the spreading branches of the famed Boscobel axis, just some fibrous safety panels and a moving ladderway. Phineus sometimes grouched about what it said about his status.

There. Bodil had gone straight to bed after their fight. Dunya had a full day ahead of her. Looking good might be poor revenge on an ungrateful child, but that was what she had. And it had relaxed her enough. Now she was ready for that idiot.

When she got into his narrow space, her most difficult refugee sat on his bed, bony knees against his chest. Phineus’ cliff of a face swept up into an impressive brow and forehead. It was almost too big for the room.

“I didn’t expect you for a couple more days,” he said.

So she’d been getting predictable. And he wanted her to know it, which was interesting. “I have something to talk to you about.”

“Am I in trouble?” He smiled.

She didn’t answer.

“Look,” he said. “I’m happy to see you. It’s kind of a treat. Not a lot happens down here.”

“I was just over in Lower Cort. In the Wendell Beech, about a third of the way up.”

“Nice spot,” he said. “If you’re the sort who likes nice spots, that is. I never pegged you for the type.”

“The branches sag down there,” she said. “Thick growth. If you climb up bough 73, then slide a bit down the branches there, you’ll find a bunch of these.” She flipped something across to him. He caught it. “All hanging from strings, blowing in the breeze. They’re getting tangled up in the twigs. Someone should have given them a bit more weight in the lower parts.”

Phineus looked expressionlessly at the doll in his hand. It was made from human hair, looped and woven together, with the loose ends bursting from the top of its head in a huge fall. Its face was miserable, with downturned mouth and squinted eyes, like a child with a stomachache. It might have been almost cute, but it was all held together by something thick and sticky.

“You know that’s blood, right?” she asked.

“Look, I don’t—”

“It’s gang sign, Phineus. Green Burnings. They jump the boughs around here. Sometimes keeping order, sometimes tearing it up. They’re Root & Branch party supporters, field workers, and enforcers. Things have been fairly balanced lately. But if the Green Burnings push up into Five Boughs, there’s going to be trouble with the Trunk. I don’t know how things are on Mars, but it’s not just about gang territory here on Boscobel. It’s always got another dimension. The Trunkers are losing support from small businesses who think the party’s not protecting their interests. Burnings jumping through Five Boughs will only make that more obvious. Things might get rough.”

“I still don’t understand local politics,” he said.

“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be messing around with it.”

“Me? What do I have to do with it?”

That expression of outraged innocence was the last straw. Dunya snatched the doll from his hand, startling the old Martian corridor fighter with her speed, and stuck it back in her pocket. “You know them. Hang out with them. Give them a bit of training. Just keeping your Martian hand in? Or something more? In any case, you’re going to get into trouble. Not just with some rival group. With me.”

“How did—”

“My sources are none of your business.” She wasn’t going to reveal that she had learned it entirely by chance, by fighting with her daughter just that morning, not because she had previously had any interest in what he was doing.

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I see that detritus, sure. Green Burnings, whatever. They flip off branches above me while I’m catching some breakfast out at Kumar’s. We got to talking. So maybe I gave them some tactical tips, just to keep my hand in. But I don’t drill them or anything like that. Maybe they hired from outside. I mean, there are Martians hanging around Preem Bough. Maybe they’ve set up a school or something.”

This was unexpected. “You’re the only Martian in Boscobel.”

“Piece of information, Dunya: there is always another Martian. We’re tricky that way.”

“So you’ve seen other Martians out there?” she said.

“Oh, you know, rumors. Someone uncomfortable with all the plant life is up there, looking for trouble. It would be nice to see someone from the old dustball.” He looked bleak. “But it’s probably false. I’m the only Martian here. Stuck down in the roots, going nowhere.”

Once Phineus started feeling sorry for himself, he usually went all the way and ended up lying facedown on the floor, refusing to respond. It could last for days.

She didn’t have time for that. “Phineus. Let me be clear. No more combat training. From now on. And no contact with anyone who jumps with Green Burnings. It will endanger your status if you do. Do you understand?”

“What does that mean? Say I want to go up to Kumar’s. If a Burning comes in and gets coffee while I’m there, do I have to pack it up and leave?”

“If you’re going to ask, I’m going to tell you. Yes. Don’t even share a common space with them until I say otherwise.” Phineus kept himself clean, but his room was a mess, with clothes shoved places that must have taken more work than just putting them away properly. He even had a couple of noodle-parlor containers under a cushion. She resisted the urge to lecture him about it. “You like to bring your food home. If you see a gang member, just do that. Any more questions?”

“If I ask, I’ll find out I have to stay in my room. So, no.”

“Smart man. Just find yourself a better hobby.”

He didn’t raise his head as she left.

Bodil had sauntered in that morning just as Dunya was getting ready to leave for work. She smelled of trees far from where she was supposed to be, with a couple of girlfriends: every spot in Boscobel had its own combination of gums, saps, pollens, nectars, and oils. Bodil relied too much on the fact that her mother wasn’t a native, and sometimes had trouble with the more subtle signals.

When Bodil tried to just brush past her mother on her way to her room, Dunya had blocked her path with an outstretched leg. First Bodil had denied she had been anywhere. Then she said she’d told her mother about it, but she, distracted and too busy, had forgotten. Then she denied that her mother had any authority that meant anything.

“And where is Dad?” Bodil had said, through too-ready tears. “Why isn’t he ever here? What’s he trying to get away from?”

Bryn was away a lot. Dunya didn’t like it either.

But the fight had come with one unexpected benefit. After Dunya had started in about Bodil’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Unray, who jumped with the Green Burnings, Bodil had burst out with a defense of his capabilities. “He’s the one who figures out their tactics. He’s learned a lot, don’t think he hasn’t. Martian stuff, not like the other gangs. It’s a whole other level of activity. You should see how he’s marked their territory over at Wendell Beech . . . ”

Her mother’s sudden interest told Bodil she’d made a mistake boasting about that. But it was too late. Dunya connected that information with other things she’d learned, and understood something of what Phineus was up to. She let her daughter go, already planning a detour to Lower Cort on her way to Phineus.

Bodil could try to use Bryn as a weapon, she thought now, as she climbed to her next appointment. It would still be just the two of them for quite some time. They’d have to fight it out on their own.

She rose through several layers of the great branches that made up the dwelling levels of Boscobel. Sometimes the view went out a great distance, revealing a group of people at a table, a prowling cat, a vortex of rain renewing pockets of water in the great branches. Usually it was compacted, held in by leaves and lattice. She finally stepped off onto a busy pathway and made her way between shops and the small personal gardens people here kept in front of their units.

No matter where you were, most of Boscobel was invisible, but from this level, about a third of the way up, you got the best feel for what this world was. Boscobel was trees, the biggest trees in the solar system. They stuck their roots deep into the crust, flung themselves across the axis of the spinning cylinder of the asteroid, and then plunged into the opposite side, where their upper branches became roots. In between, vast boughs spread, providing living and production areas. Some had developed leaves meters across or complex meshes of interlaced branches. Though they still bore names like sycamore and juniper, they bore only slight resemblances to their earth-rooted ancestors.

“I started out late,” she said, as she came up to Fama’s dining area. “I’m not catching up.”

“That’s okay, you can help me get things ready. Let’s roll this out.”

Dunya pushed hot tables loaded with steaming pots out onto the balcony that looked out over a wide opening among the trees. Nothing dramatic, but a nice spot. It was shaded by a couple of gigantic leaves, each of which had bugs scurrying in its furry underside. To any asteroid-dweller eye, Boscobeli or not, that was comforting. It meant that, no matter what else happened, you wouldn’t starve.

Fama was a big woman who seemed to wear all of her clothes at the same time. The outer garment was always different, but Dunya thought she recognized a couple of the layers underneath. It was cooler than average here, where a breeze came down from the distant North Pole. But she didn’t think that was the explanation. Fama was still ready to flee, and wanted to make sure she had everything she needed with her when the time came.

“Any shakedowns recently?” Dunya asked.

“None, thanks to your suggestion.”

Dunya tried to remember what she had come up with.

“Ah, Strop.”

Fama shrugged. “He knows his food, I’ll give him that.”

Merv Strop was an agent of the Office of Adversary Knowledge, Boscobel’s internal security force. Fama had been getting harassed by some low-level thugs from the Dead Roots, competitors to those Green Burnings Phineus gave tactics classes to. Dunya had suggested that she invite agent Strop to dine, in a visible way. The Dead Roots had moved off to find an easier target, while Strop had stayed.

“He’s actually got a real crime to solve, I hear,” Fama said. “Someone took off with an ancient emergency kit from some secure area. It’s sweating his skull, making him ornery.”

Dunya had to get to business. “I’m curious about someone. In the area. A Martian, I’ve heard.”

“Anything else? Martians don’t got red dots on their foreheads to make them easy to spot.”

Dunya had found a few minutes to check up on available tourist entries. She had access because tourists were sometimes refugees in disguise—or ended up as refugees when a political shift back home left them unable to return after their relaxing vacation lounging in a tree branch. No Martians had turned up, but there was one good possibility, from the innerbelt asteroid Fortuna. Fortuna had close relations with Mars, and might have been willing to cooperate in screening someone’s identity. If so, this person had some connections to the Martian government, but was probably operating unofficially.

“It’s someone a fairly tough guy would still be nervous about. One possibility is a woman, supposedly from Fortuna.” And Phineus had been nervous. Who knew what enemies Phineus might have made back on Mars?

“I need some critters,” Fama said. “Soup’s kind of bland.”

Dunya helped pluck bugs from the underside of the leaf. Most of them escaped her fingers. Fama grabbed writhing handfuls and dumped them into the steaming pot. Their shells puffed, and their dissolving legs gave the stock the saffron color that marked its quality. A restaurant depended on the diet of its feedbugs as much as it did on the skill of its chef.

“That might actually explain a few things, though.” Fama tasted, and nodded in satisfaction. “That’s enough now. Let the rest go.”

The bugs scurried into the fibers. “You’ve seen someone?” Dunya said.

“Didn’t think ‘Martian’ ’til you said. A woman. Tall. Does claim to be from Fortuna but moves like she grew up in gravity. No obvious business. Has a drink here, chats with someone there. But she’s working hard the whole time. No relaxation in her.” Fama was desperate to expand her business, kept her eye on competitors and potential customers.

“Any idea where I can find her?”

“She sleeps at the Moss, I think.”

Fama was looking over Dunya’s shoulder to see who might have come in. She should let the woman get to her business.

“Anything else you need to talk about?” Dunya said.

“Well . . . ” Fama was suddenly reluctant. “Tell me. How long did it take you to feel that you fit in?”

“Here in Boscobel?” Dunya made it a principle to be honest with her clients. Sometimes that was difficult. “Most days I don’t feel I fit in at all. But sometimes, when I stand under a dripping leaf and watch the white gibbons jump the gap at Gantan, I think I should never have been anywhere else.”

Fama scooped a bug out of the soup and sucked thoughtfully on its head. “Hope for me yet, then.”

“Hope for us all.”

A couple of clients later, Dunya was at the Moss, a set of rental rooms on stilts above the mosses that gave the name. This woman was after Phineus for something, and Phineus was nervous about it. His casualness had been unconvincing. If she was keeping Phineus under observation, Dunya had a chance to maybe spot her.

Phineus wouldn’t listen to a thing Dunya had told him. He’d go to breakfast, meeting with a Green Burning or two, maybe in a corner, so as not to be obvious. If this woman, whoever she was, meant to keep him under observation, that would be an easy spot. If Phineus then went back to sulk in his unit, the woman might take the opportunity to come back to the Moss to take care of other business. If she did, she would most likely skirt the roots of the big ash tree.

That was a lot of assumptions. But Boscobel was incredibly resistant to travel if you didn’t know it well. Once visitors learned a useful route, they tended to stick to it. Dunya found a spot by a mossy root where she could watch, get work done, and have someone bring her a coffee every now and then.

After an hour or so, she had updated everyone’s files. Just as she was considering giving it up, she saw an odd bit of movement. Someone had started down the stairs from the direction of Phineus, glanced across the open area below, then stepped back. Somehow, Dunya had been spotted.

Now Dunya was even more interested. Who was this woman? And why was she so anxious to avoid an interview?

She’d been successful in predicting the Martian’s route home, at least. Where would the woman go now? She’d probably planned out some escape route and bolt-hole, for contingencies. Dunya was used to people trying to avoid her.

What choices would have seemed smart to a Martian corridor dweller who hadn’t had the time to work out the intricacies of Boscobel? The main question was: up or down? Right here was a mazelike sprawl of roots. Concealment would seem easier, and it was just the kind of place that would give comfort to a Martian.

But she would have thought past that. She’d try to be unpredictable, at least to herself. And she’d want to use the ways in which Boscobel differed from her home. She’d want things to be interesting. She’d climb.

There were three good routes up from here. The closest one was exposed in most directions, easily seen. One of the other two, then.

As it happened, both those routes hit a bottleneck in the understory, in a volume that had suffered a fire a couple of decades before. Several branches had not regrown to useful size, so both those routes would kink back to near the ash trunk.

Dunya knew another way up. It was longer and involved climbing higher, into the crown. There was no on-bough route there, where a high wind swept the branches. To the inexperienced eye, it looked impassable. But Dunya knew a tunnel inside a bough, the result of a cleared-out fungal infection that sometimes served as swing housing for low-status new dwellers. She’d have to step over people’s shitpots, but they knew her there. After that a drop-down would put her across where the Martian would have to go. That should persuade her that Dunya was someone she had to pay attention to.

No matter what, after that she had to get home, find her daughter, and try to keep the rest of her life under repair. She grabbed a ladderway and rose up.

The sunglobe had moved past its brightest point and lunchtime had gone past when Dunya found herself in a wet space under massive leaves. Water burped up onto the ridged surfaces, and cascaded down to the hanging gardens below. Only a few misguided frogs clinging to strands of pale fungus gave hints of life elsewhere.

This was part of Boscobel’s secret support equipment. Fluid-filled tubes along the walls carried nourishment to the higher reaches of the impossible trees. Light fibers pumped photons into photosynthetic centers to support metabolisms that couldn’t possibly get all their energy from the mostly decorative sunglobe.

The woman now dodged through a small cafe that hung from the rough bark of the oak bough just below here. It was a good spot to check for pursuit.

Too bad for her that Dunya was ahead of her, not behind.

She was a long-limbed woman with big hands and feet. With the strength in her shoulders she looked like she could have picked up the entire cafe and shaken everything out of it. But instead of revealing any force, she moved smoothly, sliding past people before they even knew she was there. She wore her dark brown hair loose, a style more suitable to a Martian corridor than leafy Boscobel. She’d clearly bought that treesilk jacket here, though, and it suited the length of her torso. Dunya pulled herself back into concealment.

The chase had taken her out of herself. Now all the worries of the day came back to her. As cold water dripped on the back of her neck, she worried about her afternoon schedule, about her next encounter with Bodil, about whether Bryn would send her a message today. The longer he was away, the more entertaining his messages got, a bad sign. A poorly healed pipe with a lumpy joint vibrated under her boot, and she saw that it had shaken a couple of the big leaves loose from their adhesive connections with each other. Pushing back with her elbow and feeling the leaves peel away from each other was like childishly poking at a loose tooth with your tongue, pleasant and disturbing at once. Looked at too closely, much of Boscobel was falling apart.

She slid out of concealment. Where was the woman? Had Dunya miscalculated?

She felt the breath behind her. There was no time to respond. Something hit the back of her head and knocked her forward. She rolled, and found herself looking up at a long boot that pushed on her throat, and beyond it, slowly coming into focus, the Martian.

The woman wasn’t beautiful, but she was certainly striking, with dark skin, high cheekbones, and big eyes the color of moss agate.

“Who the hell are you?” Dunya said.

“I could ask you the same thing,” the Martian said.

“You could, but you have no right to. I’m a citizen of Boscobel trying to get through my day. You’re the one who snuck in here in pursuit of Phineus Gora.”

“And who is Phineus Gora to you?”

“My client. He’s a refugee. I’m responsible for grafting him onto Boscobel.”

“Good luck with that.” The woman was amused. “So you look out for him.”

“I look out for all my refugees. It’s my job. He’s worried about why you’re here.”

“But he didn’t give you any details, hoping your sense of responsibility would put you in my way.” The amused look disappeared. “He had no right to risk you that way. His problems should stay his own.” She pulled her boot off Dunya’s throat.

For a second, Dunya didn’t know what to do.

“Get up, get up.” The woman was impatient. “You’ve tempted me into . . . actually, I think you’ve tempted me into exactly what Phineus hoped. Exposing myself. Giving the OAKs a reason to throw me out of Boscobel. Maybe he’s smarter than he seems.”

Dunya sat up. What had Phineus gotten her to do?

“He knows who you are,” Dunya said.

The woman laughed. “He thinks he does.”

“But I still have no idea.”

“It may not matter. But . . . my name is Miriam Kostal. I’m from Mars.”

“Dunya Hautala.”

“Let me be short. Phineus is the inside man for a filibustering expedition that left Mars orbit two months ago and will be here within a day. Does that mean anything to you?”

Anarchic Mars had turned into a menace to everyone between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth. A weak central government, recovering from assassination and attempted revolution, was unable to stop ambitious groups from putting together military expeditions to seize individual asteroids and set themselves up as ruling juntas. As a girl, Dunya had fled just such a takeover, finally fetching up on Boscobel.

“And so you take a room at the Moss and follow Phineus around?” Dunya said. “How much sense does that make? Do the OAKs know? Anyone else?”

“No one knows. Even on Mars. Filibustering expeditions rarely succeed without cooperation from their targets, either tacit or explicit. On Mars, the expedition has some official support. Here . . . I have no idea who might be involved. Anyone could have an interest in rearranging things to end up closer to the top. Phineus is a technician, not anyone involved in political discussions. He’s got a specific mission, assisting the initial penetration by the attacking force. I can’t trust anyone here. But I don’t need to. All I need to do is figure out what he’s doing, and stop it. Then I can be on my way.”

Miriam was almost persuasive. It was always tempting to skip the mess of political compromise and get straight to the decisive action. And Boscobel sure was a mess. Dunya didn’t even try to deny it. But decisive action always left its own mess, to be cleaned up by people like her, while people like Miriam strode off in search of some other dramatic problem to fix.

Dunya slid herself to sit with her back against the loose leaves.

“The complexities of corruption are all we’ve got,” Dunya said. “I’m sure not everyone’s looking forward to being ruled by someone else. If you have information that will help our government fend off an attack, you should share it.”

“No. I’ll be arrested. And now you. Any investigation will be ended by the new regime. End of story. End of us.”

That was plausible enough. But Miriam hadn’t even tried getting cooperation. Dunya found herself irritated at the woman, impressive though she was. Boscobel was her home. She didn’t like thinking of it as a clump of trees run by people instantly eager to betray it for a better deal.

The bottom of the leaves was loose. The top still stuck. She didn’t have time to work on it more. She had no real reason to trust Miriam. She had to make contact with someone. She leaned her head back, as if thinking it over, and pushed harder. She knew there was a branch about ten feet below, where she could find a quick route down. The leaves parted behind her and she fell through.

From the last glimpse of her face, Miriam was taken completely by surprise. But she recovered almost instantly. She dove forward, whipped out a long arm, and just managed to snag Dunya’s ankle as she fell. Stopping Dunya’s fall almost jerked her out of the gap. She braced one foot against the ripping leaf and swung Dunya to the side, until she dangled over a much longer drop. The endless network of tree boughs circled around her.

She could tell Miriam was considering it. People would pretty much assume that Dunya had tried something too difficult for a non-native to do properly. “Poor Dunya never quite got the hang of it . . . ”

With a sudden effort, Miriam hauled her in. Dunya curled up and grabbed the edge of the leaf. Finally, she lay on the floor next to Miriam, sucking in air.

“Nice move,” Miriam said. “You practice that?”

“A sudden inspiration.”

“Look,” Miriam said. “You want to go to the OAKs for help? I can’t stop you. It won’t help, and it might put this whole world at hazard. But it’s up to you.”

“Would you really have killed me?” Dunya said.

“An impolite question. We’ve been slashing each other’s faces on Mars for a decade or more now, trying to solve problems by eliminating the people we think are causing them. Hasn’t worked for us, but it’s habit now.”

“Not for you, though.”

“I wouldn’t rely on the quality of my habits, if I were you. Go. Go now. Before I get sensible.”

Dunya could feel the stare of those agate eyes like something physical. She thought about saying something else, but nothing, not even “good luck,” made sense. Without another word, she turned and went.

“Eh?” Strop looked up from his soup. “Dunya. What are you doing here?”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

“Well, I . . . ” Strop grunted in annoyance as Dunya pulled a chair up and joined him at his table. “Suit yourself, then.”

Strop’s pale hair lay plastered to a soft-looking skull. He was the local OAK agent, and as OAKs went, he was a decent sort. OAKs didn’t go very far, Dunya reminded herself.

“What do you know about Phineus?” she said. “I mean, what drove him from Mars, why he’s here. Who he’s in contact with.”

Strop swallowed a spoonful of the soup and closed his eyes. He was known for his devotion to food, and his presence at a restaurant actually served as a sign of approval. So maybe Fama wasn’t quite the victim she made herself sound.

“Phineus is your client, isn’t he?”

“Of course,” Dunya said.

“So it’s your job to make sure he stays out of trouble. What we pay you for. Didn’t you do some kind of intake when you got him? Then you know he’s a protected exile. Unable to return to Mars, but protected by Martian law. A Martian trying to kill him would be in serious trouble on return home. Anyone after him would have an unusual devotion to justice. Please be more vigilant about your intakes. They give you at least a little preliminary information. Too bad we don’t get to do one when we have a child. That’s why children can surprise you. They never fill out the proper forms.”

Strop had two well-liked and successful children, both older than Bodil. It was just exasperating.

She thought about giving him Miriam Kostal. That he’d have to pay attention to. But Miriam had gauged her right. She couldn’t do it.

And she was reflecting that there were probably good reasons why Phineus had been dumped on her without much background information. Did Strop know those reasons? In any event, bringing that up would either sound like whining or be actively dangerous.

“Look, Dunya.” Fama had whisked away the soup, careful to show no sign she’d seen Dunya earlier, and the sculpted pyramid that steamed in front of him smelled delicious. “I appreciate that you’ve gotten a yen to get better at your job. These impulses never last. If you don’t mind a bit of friendly advice, I’d say that you should look after your own family situation instead.”

“My family situation?” Dunya said. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He pursed his disconcertingly full lips, pleased that he’d pissed her off. “Children can be a handful. Sometimes they can even do things that pass beyond the childish, and get in real trouble. Are you heading home soon?”

“I don’t think that’s your business.”

“If you’re hoping to find your daughter there, give up on that notion. She’s found herself a hidey-hole. She seems to think it’s secret. Secrets can lead to trouble.”

This was too much. Not only was she not going to get any action out of Strop, he was going to punish her for trying by implying that she was a bad mother.

And what was even more irritating was how right Miriam Kostal had been. There would be no help in the OAKs. Whether or not there was some high-level interest in a change of regime, field agents like Strop knew better than to wander into delicate political situations. It might interfere with their digestion. So Strop would fight as hard as he could to hear nothing about Phineus.

She pushed her chair back, ready to stand. But she couldn’t just leave. He had her, just as he intended.

“Do you know where she is?” Dunya said.

“In the crust. Near the Xanthus airball. Her boyfriend has run into trouble from his Green Burnings buddies, big surprise. Bodil might easily end up in the same trouble. If those kids broke into where I think they did, they’re all in serious trouble. Stop worrying about what plausible Martians might be up to and give your daughter some thought. This isn’t official advice, by the way. One parent to another.”

“Thanks, Strop.” Dunya had to consciously loosen her jaw to speak. “I hope I can return the favor someday.”

“Not likely, Dunya. Not likely.”

Her daughter was definitely a Boscobel native, Dunya thought. An immigrant like her would have tried to hide in the trees. Bodil knew the many ways of getting found there, and had instead burrowed into Boscobel’s neglected shell, which she thought of as invisible.

Dunya looked up into the shaft above. Boscobel had a huge volume in its shell, but only the poorest lived in it. The air rumbled. Just beyond was the vast space of Xanthus, one of the pressure equalization spaces excavated after the newly expanded shell of Boscobel had cooled.

The only illumination came from infrequent light bumps. There was no way she was going to stumble around this ridiculous space searching for her daughter. She stood in the center of the shaft and said, “Come down, Bodil. Now.”

Before a minute was out, she wanted to say something more. She stopped herself. The silence grew as hollow as the space around her. The best way to get a client to say something was to say nothing. That conversational vacuum could suck out the most amazing things.

There was a rustle. A pair of shoes appeared in a hole about ten meters up. Bodil slid into view and then slowly climbed down to the level where her mother stood.

Bodil favored her father, Bryn. She was taller than Dunya, but with softer features, big eyes, and downturned mouth. She looked gentle. Maybe someday she would be.

“It’s your fault.” Bodil spoke quietly, the way she showed she was really angry.

“What? What’s my fault?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!” The other way she showed she was really angry was by yelling. “You got that information about that Martian out of me, and now Unray’s been beaten. They knew it had to come from him. They hit him, momma. A lot. I never trusted them. I want to hurt them.”

“You think that’s bad?” Dunya said. “Things are way worse than you think. Every one of us is in trouble. I don’t have time for this. You don’t have time for it. If we’re not careful, we might all end up as slaves, or refugees, or something worse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I need your help, Bodil. I’m sorry about what happened to Unray. Probably not as sorry as you’d like me to be. But we’ve got Martians crawling around our home that might rip the whole thing apart and I don’t have time to worry about your stupid boyfriend and his lame-ass buddies.”

For the first time in a long time, Bodil clearly didn’t know what to say. She’d hoped her mother would feel guilty and help her. Instead, her mother was asking for help herself. That hadn’t happened in an equally long time.

Dunya realized she’d gotten up against her daughter, looking up at her, feeling like a knife pointed at her belly. She stepped back, looked around. “Isn’t this their territory? You shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t care what they call their territory. They don’t deserve anything. I thought . . . I can do something to them, make them feel it, the way they made me feel it.”

“Well, Bodie,” a voice said from the gloom. “Good luck for you ’cause here’s your chance.”

Phineus had trained the Green Burnings well. They appeared all around, blocking every route of escape, while moving as casually as if just out for a stroll.

“Eger,” Bodil said. “Eger!”

“Yeah?” A young man slouched from the shadows. He wore a long jacket decorated with silver loops and pins. Pieces of the stolen emergency kit, Dunya thought, the parts they thought weren’t good for anything.

“My mother doesn’t have anything to do with any of this,” Bodil said.

Eger looked Dunya up and down, raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t look that way to me. Like she said, this is Burnings’ territory. Doesn’t matter who’s messing with it. Or why.”

“Why you—”

Eger blocked Bodil’s blow with a forearm and threw her back. Dunya took a step forward, and found herself looking at a blade that seemed to reflect more light than there was in that dark place.

Eger shook his head. “Nah, Mom. Not a good idea.”

Bodil was puffing next to her. Dunya thought she was crying, but when she glanced at her daughter, she realized that it was the breath of rage. Knife or not, greater fighting skill or not, she looked like she was going to throw herself at Eger.

Did she know this girl?

“You can define your territory with respect to some other gang,” Dunya said. “Not for ordinary citizens.”

“Ordinary citizens?” Eger was in her face. “You telling me you don’t know what’s what? You come here, know all our business, what we do.” He looked even younger close up, with smooth skin and curly reddish hair.

“We’ll get out,” Dunya said.

“‘We’ won’t do anything. Bodil and us got to talk.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Stop it, Eger,” Bodil said. “Don’t be an idiot. My mom doesn’t have anything to do with this. You’re the one who beat Unray. Right?”

Eger grinned. “I got some licks in, sure. But we had to share. Everyone wanted a piece. You know what it’s like when everyone wants a piece. We share, in the Burnings.”

Even though he was genuinely dangerous, Dunya found his leer too deliberate, like he practiced it in front of the mirror.

“Because Unray could have taken you alone,” Bodil said. “That’s why?”

Dunya knew that tone of lazy insolence well. It made her want to hit her daughter. She never had.

Eger had less restraint. Bodil dodged his first, overhand blow, but he moved fast and punched her in the side. She oofed and bent over and Dunya slid away from her position, looking for an opening, even as she knew they weren’t going to get out of this—

There was a wail from somewhere overhead, and a body came hurtling down out of the dangling roots. It hit so hard it bounced.

Dunya moved as if she had expected exactly that to happen. She hit Eger with her shoulder and, off-balance, he fell.

She turned to tell Bodil to run. Bodil was gone, already moving at full tilt, slashing at the face of the young Green Burning who tried to stop her. The boy dodged back, automatically covering his face. By the time he realized he still had his looks, it was too late, and she was past.

Behind, another crash, as another scout fell from above, followed by shouts.

Her daughter ran beautifully, also like her father. Dunya’s own legs were shorter, and she had to pump them hard to keep up. She kept expecting resistance, but the Burnings had been confident enough not to set pickets out this far.

And if it hadn’t been for that sudden intervention, they wouldn’t have needed them. Who had flung that scout down? He seemed to have been flung with some force, by someone with muscles. Martian muscles.

She just managed to keep Bodil in view as she dodged, first into this corridor, then that, then up a ramp, first shallow, then steep, then stairs. Stairs covered with moss and ferns. They were out, in the shadows amid the roots. Around was the rustle of leaves, the green glow, air thick with pollen. Bees flickered in the light that made it through from high overhead.

Bodil turned and fell against her mother, almost knocking her over. She was laughing. Unbelievably, she was laughing, almost helpless.

“Ah!” Bodil said. “Did you see the look on his face?”

“I was too busy panicking.”

“He always thinks he’s got it all under control. Jerk.” The savage look Bodil threw back down the black hole of the stairs was beautiful and terrifying. “I visited stupid Unray in the hospital. He talked all tough too, and blamed it all on me.”

“Okay, it was my fault. Right now I need your mind working. Someone was above us in that shaft. She’s just a visitor, doesn’t know Boscobel. She’s going to be moving out of that area, fast. Where would she go, and can we intercept her?”

“There’s really only one way. Come on.”

The route turned out to be fairly simple, involving just a climb up to a living bridge between a twisted olive tree and a baobab whose hollow interior held a playground filled with shrieking children.

Dunya grabbed her daughter’s shoulder and pointed. Below them, tall above the crowd, Miriam Kostal strolled. Dunya could sense that Bodil instantly picked her out.

Without hesitation, Bodil jumped off the stubby branch of a baobab. Dunya followed, hitting a mossy spot that would have been softer if it hadn’t been so worn. The gravity was highest here, near the roots, and Dunya really felt the impact as she landed.

Bodil slid ahead, and up again, on the aerial root of a mangrove. They were now ahead of Miriam, though Dunya had been in that position before, and it hadn’t helped her. Just below them was a noodle shop, Cairngorm’s, sending up puffs of aromatic steam and making her hungry. She looked down at the bubbling pots, the patrons with their heads bent over bowls. She’d never been there, but it seemed familiar to her—

“Mind telling me why we’re after her?” Bodil plopped down in a tangled mass of vines and looked up at the hummingbirds that investigated a flower just above her.

“Your buddies the Green Burnings are being used by someone else,” Dunya said. “A Martian. Phineus. Who happens to be one of my clients.”

“You never talk about your clients.”

“They appreciate my silence. You should too. But he’s kind of moved himself out of the confidential category by trying to get me killed. And you, now.”

“Nah. I don’t know about this Phineus. Eger was on his own, just being his usual jerk of a self. Defending Burning territory. I was just hiding out there. Hoping no one would ever find me. But you did.”

Dunya had already resolved never to tell her daughter how she had found out. It was too humiliating.

Fortunately, Miriam rescued her again.

“You think that was smart?” Miriam Kostal stood over them, casting more shadow than it seemed reasonable for her lean form. “Putting yourself at risk was bad enough. Putting my mission at risk might be fatal.”

Instead of being intimidated by the other woman’s anger, Dunya found herself just as mad. “I don’t need to justify myself to you.”

“Protecting your offspring.” Miriam eyed Bodil. “How do you feel about being defended, little girl?”

“Don’t try to set us against each other.” Bodil’s insolence was more pleasant when applied to someone else. “That’s our own, on our own time. Nothing for you. And my name’s Bodil.”

Miriam looked the girl over, then smiled, an expression as tight as a wrestler’s grip. “Pleased to meet you, Bodil. Have you had a chance to figure out what it is you are now involved in?”

“No. Not that much.”

“If I knew what your mother was up to, I might be able to fill in some of the gaps for you.”

Bodil and Miriam turned to look at her, and Dunya found herself nettled. That had been a nice bit of solidarity with her daughter, but it was over. Now that they were standing side by side, she fancied she saw similarities between her daughter and the rangy Martian. They both had sharp jaws, and an easy stance. Assuming that Dunya was perversely withholding information seemed to be another thing they had in common.

“Bodil. That trim Eger was wearing, some of the others. What was it? Where did they get it?”

“Those loops? They grabbed some kind of gear from some old locker.”

“Emergency gear?”

“I . . . I don’t know. They were all excited about it, though. First real operation. Tactics, penetration of secure areas. Martian training, they said.”

“You have information about it?” Miriam said in Dunya’s ear.

“A friend who runs a restaurant heard about it. Someone took off with a complete emergency kit. An old one, probably ignored and forgotten.”

“Where did they run their operation?” Miriam asked Bodil.

“Imperial Valley. There’s an access lock there, not used much now. This was in the storage area nearby. Secure, I guess. Not as secure as the OAKs thought, though.” She couldn’t suppress a hint of pride in what her boyfriend and his unpleasant friends had accomplished. “But . . . what’s going on?”

Dunya could feel Miriam waiting. This was up to her, how much to tell. “Phineus, the guy they’ve been getting their lessons from. He’s the inside man in a Martian filibustering expedition that means to take over Boscobel. He’s using them as some kind of screen.”

“He’s using them to gain access to an airlock,” Miriam said. “A place they can make entry. And their vessel will be here soon.”

Bodil looked at Dunya. “Momma. What do we do?”

“There’s really no need for you two to do anything,” Miriam said.

“Really?” Dunya had thought about how to argue this. Practicality was the best way. “Does that give you the best chance of success?”

“Are you going to help me by going back to the OAKs again?” Sarcasm didn’t suit Miriam.

“The theft of safety equipment is a real crime, one the OAKs can enforce without any concern about who is hoping the Martians will give him a better office. If they hold Phineus for that, it will give you some breathing space. And Bodil . . . do you think you could face Unray again?”

“Sure. I have to go there and tell him we’re through. I was too mad the last time.”

“Well, that will give you a good reason to pump him on what the Green Burnings are up to. I’ll bet it isn’t at all what Phineus thinks they’re doing.”

“I have the perfect outfit,” Bodil said. “I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to wear it. I’ll break his heart.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Do I get to say anything about the help I need?” Miriam was surprisingly patient.

“I waited for that,” Dunya said. “I finally went without it.”

“We’re making a lot of assumptions. Some are bound to be wrong. Be ready to switch direction as necessary. Keep your OAKs on the emergency kit, and leave any mention of Martians to me.”

“You got it.”

“I have to handle Phineus carefully,” Miriam said. “He’s got support back home, and harming him would have bad consequences. But preventing him from acting will achieve what I need. Then, maybe, Martians can start hashing out their problems with each other, rather than exporting them. It’s a dream, of course. But it’s one I share with my husband.”

“You’re married?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. Hektor doesn’t get to see much of me, unfortunately. While he’s trying to build a stable coalition at home, I’m usually out trying to keep each leak from turning into a blowout.”

“I’m sure he misses you.”

“I wish he was out here with me. He’d be better at working with people than I am.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dunya said. “You seem to be doing fine.”

Dunya could see that, despite herself, the fierce Martian was pleased. Dunya wanted to meet the man who could keep someone like that in his bed.

“The sooner we take care of Phineus and his ridiculous ambitions, the sooner I can get home,” Miriam said.

Dunya would have loved to order Bodil home, to prepare dinner and perhaps ready for a siege. That would just result in Bodil’s running off to do something on her own. She hoped she would not regret the choice that she had made.

“See you, momma.” Bodil gave her a kiss, and was gone.

By this time, with the sunglobe getting red, Strop would have moved up and over and been holding court at a restaurant high up in an aromatic cedar. She’d have to find a way to get him on that missing emergency kit without getting herself arrested—

“Twice in one day.” Phineus blocked the twisting ladder ahead of her. “How about that?”

He was the last person Dunya wanted to see. “I’m in kind of a hurry right now.”

“Sure, sure.” He moved as if to go around her, then leaned in, his big forehead looming. “Did you get a chance to check out my fellow Martian?”

“It’s on my list, Phineus.”

“I’m in danger! It’s not at all like you not to take the concerns of your clients seriously.”

Unfortunately, that was true. He knew her too well. “I think you just made her up.”

“Maybe I did. But was my imagination good enough for you to notice if the Martian pursuing me was a man or a woman?”

No way she could remember how precisely he’d described who was after him. It didn’t matter. He knew that she would have checked his story out by now, and that Miriam would have done something about it. As far as he was concerned, no explanation for why Dunya was walking around healthy and alive was a good one.

“I might have a chance to get out there before I go to bed.” If he wasn’t going to move, she would swing around him. She glanced up at a convenient branch, to find two long-jacketed kids hanging over her, one girl, one boy. How long had they been there?

Phineus shook his head. “She doesn’t miss, Dunya. That’s why I’m afraid of her. I was hoping she’d make a mistake and get herself in trouble. Instead of killing you, she recruited you. And here I thought you were on my side.”

Before Dunya could move, the two kids grabbed her and swung her into the leaves.

To her surprise, there were fish here. A carp bumped its snout into her mask.

Within five minutes of grabbing her they had bound her, put her into a mask and air supply, tied her legs to an elastic band, and sucked her down under a water drop. It was half local water supply, half wildlife reserve—and now her prison. Phineus had not looked her in the eye as the Green Burnings had done their work, but just before the water had closed over her head, he had muttered, “The new administration will free you.”

He had made her complicit with his plot. Only his success would bring someone here to keep her from suffocating. If he failed she would be left here to become food for these fish.

Dunya breathed slowly and carefully. She had no idea how much air she had, and struggle would just shorten the time she had left. She’d curled herself down a couple of times. She could find no way to influence her bonds. She could only plan for what she would do if someone rescued her, or compose her soul for death.

The face mask, with its blinking indicators, smelled old. It had to be from the stolen emergency kit. So it was designed for vacuum, not underwater use, yet another thing to worry about. It did have an eyeball-controlled display that she ran through. No comm, and no “cut my bonds” command. It did have an inventory list of the kit of which it was a part, some things marked as “exhausted” or “damaged-unrepairable.” It included two spacesuits, of which this was presumably one, an exoshelter, fuel cells, enough procal bars to live on for a few months while awaiting rescue . . . and a full emergency airlock. Without her consciously willing it, the faceplate showed her an exploded view of the airlock and listed all of its many components. Good to go, it told her with satisfaction.

Phineus had gotten the Green Burnings to steal the old emergency kit because he wanted the airlock. Dunya was sure of it. That the kit had been stored near the Imperial Valley airlock was just a distraction. Miriam was wasting her time there.

But he needed a place to link inside and outside. Asteroid environments didn’t survive by being easy to punch through. Dammit. It was one thing to resolve to be calm and meditative and accepting. It was another to keep on doing it. Where was Bryn? Why wasn’t he around, at least to comment mordantly on affairs? Her husband had been increasingly given to mordant commenting. Doing something about things was less his line.

But she was being unfair. He worked with cultural development in various asteroids, as far sunward as Phobos. He was respected, and busy. When he came home he was loving, attentive, and everything he needed to be.

And then he was gone again. And she found herself just as happy. Could she imagine some other man who she would want around more? Sometimes she thought she could. But she, too, was too busy to spend too much time on that.

Bryn’s absence was equally hard on Bodil, of course. So she ran with losers like Unray, getting rudimentary political education with the Green Burnings. That seemed a reasonable explanation. Nothing to do with anything Dunya herself had done.

Did this face mask have a setting that sucked away all illusions? Clever, some of these old gadgets. A rough way to die, though, facing the absolute truth about everything you’d been so careful to keep under control.

She thought about Bryn’s own dusty and peppery scent, which had eventually faded from his side of the bed, careful though she’d been not to move anything, and only breathe it when she absolutely had to. She’d smelled something else recently, associated with quite a different man. Peppery as well, but damper, and tanged with . . . cilantro. She remembered the noodle shop she’d parked herself above to get a drop on Miriam.

Phineus had shoved leftover containers under his cushions. From that same place, Cairngorm’s.

He was working with his airlock somewhere down in Xanthus. The crust was thinner down there, sure, but it was still nothing you could just hack through.

Something splashed above her. A larger fish? Since the carp, she hadn’t seen much more than larvae. But now it was dark, and she couldn’t see anything. Someone yanked on her. She stretched up, then was pulled back by the cable holding her bound feet. She sensed swearing, hearing nothing. Arms reached far in, grabbed her, and pulled hard. She rose and rose . . . and finally pulled free. Then she was lying on a seeping bank of wildflowers. Her face mask was pulled off.

“Momma!” Bodil said. “Are you still breathing?”

Unray had given Bodil her mother’s location. He was out of the loop as far as Green Burning tactical operations were concerned. But someone had felt it right to tell him that his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend’s mother had been captured and imprisoned in a water tank in the cedars.

You found virtue in the oddest places.

“I guess they sometimes hide stuff in here,” Bodil said. “Contraband. Not usually people, though.”

“What’s that?” Dunya looked at a bundle of steaming leaves that lay amid dew-covered yellow flowers.

“Mom! You have no idea how hard it was for me growing up, to have a mom that didn’t know anything.”

“God, of course I know what it is. Should I eat it, or nap on it?”

It was the wrong tone to take, even if she was newly resurrected and should be cut some slack. Bodil pushed her lower lip out and looked about to cry.

Dunya hugged her daughter. “We’re on a mission,” she whispered. “And we have a lot to do. Unwrap it.”

“You’re cold.” Bodil pulled off her jacket and put it around her soaked, shivering mother. Then she dropped to her knees and unwrapped the leaves, letting steam rise into the dark air.

This lozenge cake was traditional Boscobeli food for a journey. The leaves were from a modified fig and added a spice to the outer layers of the dough, which cooked enzymatically when tugged in just the right way. Dunya had never cared for it, finding it too sour for a decent dessert, and, uncooked, too hard as a pillow, the use the ancient and fictional tradition had for it.

Of course, a people defined itself by those things no sensible individuals would pick on their own. And Bodil was Boscobel born and bred. So Dunya sat on a branch in a world she had not chosen, happy to be alive, and shared the almost inedible cake with her daughter.

Bodil had figured it out instantly. Any airball had an expulsion pore, through which the waste rock had been expelled. And above that, a series of baffles. All safe, no danger from the ancient weakness.

Except that, at the base of Xanthus, the baffles had collapsed into useless piles of cracked rock, another sign of the deferred maintenance that put the entire world at risk.

Dunya climbed down the tumbled slabs alone. Bodil had gone to find Miriam. She wouldn’t succeed, of course. But Miriam would find her. Dunya only hoped that would happen before she got herself into serious trouble down here.

One other thing Bodil had learned from Unray: there was no one from the Green Burnings down here. They’d gotten irritated with their mysterious guru, and had dumped Phineus in preference to mixing it up with their competitors over in Five Boughs. After that, a party. Phineus was on his own down here.

It didn’t really matter. He could take her easily. She had to wait for Miriam, who knew what to do. Miriam would have told her that herself.

She couldn’t listen to Miriam, even though what Miriam had not actually said made perfect sense. Phineus was still her client, making bad choices. Even as she knew she had to stop him, she recognized him as her responsibility.

There he was, working with a small light. The airlock was in. She could see the rubble from the sealed pore all around it. Being so small, it had to be secret. It could fit, at most, two people at a time. It was next to impossible to get an army in position and deployed using that. But, as she had learned from both Phineus and Miriam, next to impossible was a Martian’s favorite spot to get a seat.

She thought she was moving quietly. Phineus heard her, and jerked around. The light caught her.

“Aren’t you cold?” he said. “You’re all wet.”

“Oh, how thoughtful, Phineus,” she said.

He muttered something.

“What?” she said.

“I said I’m sorry. It had to be done.”

“Please stop, Phineus. Just stop. Do you really think you’re still going to get a force of Martians in here?”

He shook his head. “You think what you see is what there is. I have support, here in Boscobel. It’s really my place, not yours.”

She tried not to think about how much he was right. “Contingent support. If-you-win support. If there’s any problem, it will vanish. I walked right in here. The gang you trained up is gone, you’re here alone. That should tell you something.”

He’d never done his own dirty work. First he’d sent Dunya into Miriam’s path in the hopes that Miriam would take her out, then he’d used his gang. Now he was pretending to be too busy to bother with her. No wonder he’d left Mars. He just wasn’t up to it.

“There’s no way to advance on Mars,” he said. “Everything’s owned or closed off. The only way to get somewhere is to come out here. There’s a lot of unrealized value in the asteroids.”

If he was arguing, there was a chance. But it was too late for him. At the last instant it seemed he knew that, because he stopped and stared at her. Before he could say anything else, Miriam dropped from somewhere overhead and kicked him in the head.

Not straight on, though. Phineus reacted fast. He tilted his head so that the force of her kick grazed past, then tried to help her on her way with a slap at her heel.

Miriam was fast too. She spun and landed in a crouch.

Dunya wished she could help. But she knew all she could do was get in the way or become a hostage.

The struggle was brief and vicious. Then Phineus whipped a rock at Miriam, and when she dodged he rolled and launched himself into a black gap among the dry roots.

Without hesitating, Miriam went after him. Both vanished among the rocks.

Dunya stepped down to the airlock. The least she could do was deactivate it while Miriam did her work.

“I need to return that in good working order,” Strop said. He stood among the rocks, looking miserable and sweaty. Stumbling around in the high-gravity area in the dark wasn’t usually his way of getting things done.

“Did it get too public?” Dunya said. “Too hard to deny?”

She hadn’t expected him to answer, and he didn’t. He lumbered forward and slapped a Maintenance Required sticker across the airlock.

“What’s going to happen?” Dunya said.

“I can at least tell you something that won’t happen. No Martian vessel will approach Boscobel. If one does, it will get a warning shot, and know to go elsewhere.”

“Thus ensuring no one ever has to testify to who knew what.”

He shrugged. “A lot of people would prefer that. You might even be one of them. If Phineus is still alive, he won’t get a trial either. He’ll be expelled. He can go to Mars, where they’ll kill him. Or he can go somewhere else. Not our problem. I do need to say that your inability to control him will be a black mark on your record. Not a lot I can do, but I’ll put in a good word for you.” He smiled at her.

She’d take a shower when she got home. That might do something about the greasy film he left on her, even as he was helping her out.

“As staff is rotated off the entry and departure airlocks to be revetted and cleared, coverage will be affected. Pretty much anyone who wants to get out of Boscobel without interference will be able to do so.”

She glanced up. Bodil stood on a rock high above. She smiled and gave her mother the thumbs-up.

“Go ahead,” Strop said. “Get your girl home. I’ll pick up our unfortunate Martian invader.”

She’d have to use Bodil to communicate with Miriam and get her off Boscobel. Too dangerous for Dunya to do it directly. That was too bad. That woman was someone to know.

Someday, she guessed, Bodil would want an off-Boscobel school. Deliberately exposing her daughter to Miriam’s influence would be dangerous, of course. But she had heard that there really was nothing like a Martian education.

She climbed up the shattered slabs of rock, back toward the trees she had come to rely on.

Originally published in The Other Half of the Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt.

About the Author

With only a handful of stories, mostly for Asimov’s, and a few well-received novels, Alexander Jablokov established himself as one of the most highly-regarded new writers of the ’90s. His first novel, Carve The Sky, was released in 1991, and was followed by other successful novels such as A Deeper Sea, Nimbus, River of Dust, and Deepdrive, as well as a collection of his short-fiction, The Breath of Suspension. His most recent novel is Brain Thief.

Supernatural Brontës

Carrie Sessarego

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are classic novels that can be reasonably placed in many different areas of the library. They contain within their pages romance, mystery, coming of age stories, and morality tales. They could also belong in the speculative fiction section, due to their reliance on supernatural elements in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. In regards to another sibling, Anne, there is a deliberate absence of these elements within her works. The presence or lack of supernatural and fantastical elements displays a choice on the part of these authors and creates a specific effect on the mind of the reader—even though these books are not generally regarded as fantasy or horror novels.

The Brontë children were Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. Their mother died in 1821 and Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis aggravated by neglect at school in 1825. In addition to more formal schooling, the surviving siblings were given unfettered access to their father’s library and developed a great admiration for the poetry of Lord Byron, which was full of fantasy and supernatural elements. As part of their art studies, they admired the fantastical imagery of painter John Martin. They also relied on their housekeeper, Tabitha Aykroyd, for legends, folklore, and fairy-tales.

As children, the siblings created vast worlds, most notably Angria and Gondal. The stories began in 1826, when Branwell was given a set of toy soldiers and Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne created an imaginary world for the soldiers called the Glass Town Confederacy. In 1827, Charlotte suggested that each sibling create their own island within the Confederacy.

Eventually Emily and Anne, who often felt left out by their older brother and sister, created Gondal, while Branwell and Charlotte focused on the world of Angria. Stories about Angria and Gondal included not only prose fiction but also maps, illustrations, and poems. Many modern critics view the works that the siblings created about these worlds as early examples of fan fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.

Both Emily and Charlotte wrote journal entries and letters in which they demonstrated an ability to switch their mental states from the Glass Town Confederacy to real life and back again. Charlotte eventually gave up her dream world of Angria, afraid that it was holding her back from an actual life and from artistic accomplishment. However, that fascination with fantasy appears again in Jane Eyre.

Charlotte’s masterpiece, Jane Eyre, is told in first person narration from the point of view of a poor girl who, through sheer stubbornness, survives a traumatic childhood and becomes a governess. Jane falls in love with her mysterious employer, Mr. Rochester, and wins his heart, only to discover that he already has a wife, Bertha, who is insane and whom Rochester keeps locked in an attic room. Jane flees from Mr. Rochester and finds her long-lost cousins and, eventually receives an inheritance that makes her self-sufficient. While her cousin, St. John, entreats her to come with him to India as a missionary, she eventually returns to Mr. Rochester and finds that Bertha is dead. She and Rochester marry at last.

Just as the Brontë sisters moved between fantasy and reality in life, Jane shows a similar ability to move back and forth between fantasy and reality. Her narration is full of metaphors and references to fantastical creatures and stories. On first meeting Rochester, she thinks of the gytrash (a legendary black dog that roams the moors). Rochester, in turn, thinks of Jane as a fairy, and at one point promises to steal her away to live on the moon. On seeing Bertha in her room, Jane thinks of “The Vampyre.” Most of these comparisons come to naught—Rochester is not a gytrash, nor does one accompany him. He’s a grumpy man with a large dog. Bertha is also not a vampire—she’s a very real woman. Jane herself is quick to disabuse Rochester of the notion that she is a fairy.

The inclusion of these moments and other instances of fantastical imagery establish a tone in which anything might happen, and nothing can be trusted. Jane is almost always wrong about events being supernatural, but she’s correct in her feeling that she’s in a kind of a fairy-tale akin to Cinderella/Beauty and the Beast. She’s also correct when she says that Thornfield Hall reminds her of Bluebeard’s Castle, a reference to the fairy-tale in which a man has a room that must not be opened because it holds the dead bodies of his previous wives.

Rochester really does have a previous wife hidden behind a forbidden door, and although the wife is physically alive, she is ‘dead’ in the sense that she is lost to madness and isolated from the world. Jane’s interest in fantasy helps her to keep her guard up, but it also blinds her to the real dangers that surround her. Jane’s intuition can’t be fully trusted, but neither can it be fully ignored.

Some moments in Jane Eyre appear to be legitimately supernatural, or at least stem from Jane’s deepest subconscious. In Jane’s view, these are moments in which God works through the forces and imagery of nature to speak the truth to her. These moments push the plot forward whenever Jane is stuck in a particular place or when she has to make a life-changing decision.

As a child, Jane essentially is a captive at her abusive aunt’s home. When her aunt locks her in the ominously named “red room” as a punishment, Jane claims to see the ghost of her uncle there. It is this vision that prompts her aunt to send Jane to Lowood School. As an adult, Jane is able to leave Lowood School thanks to some advice from an inner voice or a “kind fairy” who provides her with information she doesn’t consciously have about how to look for a job. She hears the instructions on how to write and post an advertisement in her head.

Jane’s next major transition comes after she learns the truth about Rochester’s first wife. Jane must choose between staying with Rochester as his mistress and leaving Thornfield Hall for a lonely and uncertain future. She is guided by a “trance-like dream”:

I dreamed I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the center of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud; a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart—

“My daughter, flee temptation.”

“Mother, I will.”

And eventually, Jane must make a final choice—whether or not to follow her cousin, St. John, to India as his wife. Just as she is about to consent to St. John’s proposal, Jane hears the voice of Rochester calling for her. “Down, superstition!” Jane declares. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused and did—no miracle—but her best.” Jane believes that this moment reveals what God really wants for her: “I locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way . . . I seemed to penetrate very near a mighty spirit.”

Jane Eyre is not usually thought of as a supernatural or fantasy novel. However, all the pivotal moments of Jane’s life are accompanied by either fantastical ideas that turn out to be mundane, or supernatural visitations. Jane Eyre is a fantasy in the sense that it represents a hope that some might hold but few attain—the hope of rising from being “poor, obscure, plain, and little,” to being wealthy, popular, and beloved. It is also a fantasy in the sense that magical events move the plot forward whenever it is at a tipping point.

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, is explicitly framed as a ghost story. This book, narrated by several different unreliable narrators, tells the story of the doomed relationship between Cathy and her adopted brother (and possibly half-brother), Heathcliff. While Wuthering Heights is often remembered as a love story, it’s actually a horror story, permeated with the supernatural. It is about traps of class, gender, and race and the way addiction and abuse is passed down through the generations, although it ends on a note of hope that the cycle can be broken.

The book opens with the appearance of ghosts. Our first narrator, Mr. Lockwood, passes a terrifying night at Heathcliff’s home, Wuthering Heights, when Cathy’s ghost comes to his window, entreating, “Let me in—let me in!” The book closes with the reputed sight of Heathcliff and Cathy, now both ghosts, walking the moor together. In between, the story deals with specific supernatural incidents, or incidents that are believed to be so by the characters. At the close of the book, though Mr. Lockwood refuses to believe it, local people swear that the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy walk the moors:

The country folks, if you ask them, would swear on the bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night since his death.

Meanwhile, images of demonic nature and demonic possession pervade the book. Heathcliff is repeatedly described as a devil, a demon, a fiend, and a monster. Heathcliff’s wife, Isabella, seriously wonders whether he is human or a “devil.” His color, described as “black” and “dark,” may also be a marker of race. In the book, it’s suggested that he might be fully or partially Spanish, Indian, or Romani. However, his coloring is more explicitly and frequently referred to by characters as a sign of his demonic nature which is inherently problematic given the ties to his implied ethnicity.

Images of possession are also all through Wuthering Heights. Cathy has tantrums so violent that they resemble spirit possession and ultimately cause her death. On her deathbed, Heathcliff asks her, “Are you possessed with a devil to talk that way to me when you are dying?” Hindley, an alcoholic, is possessed by “the demon drink,” as alcohol was commonly referred to at the time. Charlotte even described Emily’s creative process in terms of possession:

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.

The use of supernatural imagery and occurrences in Wuthering Heights accentuates the often forgotten fact that this is a horror story, not a romance. However, the true horror lies not in the ghostly occurrences, but in the inexorable legacy of child abuse, sexism and classism, and alcoholism. Only when Cathy’s daughter and Heathcliff’s adopted son, Hareton, find new ways to interact is the cycle broken. Whether Cathy and Heathcliff sleep soundly in their graves or roam the moor as ghosts remains conjecture, but we know that the generational horrors that plagued them have not endured to haunt the new generation.

Anne Brontë was still a baby when her mother died. She was especially close to her aunt, since she had no memory of her mother, and in childhood was very attached to Emily since their ages were so close. While Charlotte, Emily, and Anne all spent periods away from home as adults, Anne stayed away the longest, finding work as a governess first at a miserable situation that inspired Agnes Grey but later in a more satisfactory position at Thorp Green Hall. For three years, Branwell worked there as well, as a tutor. Both lost their jobs when Branwell was discovered to be having an affair with his employer’s wife.

The novels of Anne Brontë (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey) are notable for their stark lack of fantasy. Anne dealt with similar subjects as her sisters: lonely governesses, abused women, the traps of class and gender. However, Anne keeps the narration strictly realistic, and puts a great deal of focus on alcoholism and other addictions. Anne was just as passionate about Gondal as Emily, but she strips her stories of fantasy. Because of this, people in her books can’t blame anything but themselves for their bad behavior and they can’t turn to anything but themselves for redemption or rescue. While religion plays a strong role, it’s in the “God helps those who help themselves” mode. The stories she tells aren’t romantic or glamorized or wrapped in mystery—are unvarnished.

In Jane Eyre, forces intervene to help Jane when she needs guidance or prompting. In Wuthering Heights, one might take some kind of comfort in thinking that maybe all this “nurture” discussion is unimportant—after all, Heathcliff’s experiment into “nurturing” Hareton into villainy fails. Maybe Heathcliff really is a devil, and maybe Cathy really is possessed.

Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall offer neither recourse nor excuses to their characters or, for that matter, their readers. Branwell died young of tuberculosis and alcoholism and was addicted to laudanum. Caring for Branwell caused an enormous amount of upheaval and grief for Charlotte and Emily; however, Anne was hurt more directly by Branwell, losing a job she had fought very hard to obtain and was unlikely to replace. Perhaps this is why her books are so stark in presenting what happens to women when men behave badly.

In his essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” H.P. Lovecraft refers to Wuthering Heights as a “piece of terror-literature.” To remove the supernatural from Wuthering Heights would be to remove the sense of inescapable doom and remorseless evil that fills the novel. Jane Eyre relies on the supernatural to create a mood in which anything can happen but no one can be trusted. On the other hand, if one were to add supernatural elements to the novels of Anne Brontë, her realism and uncompromising insistence on individual responsibility would be fatally diluted. While the books seem wild and fiery, they are crafted with precision. It is this precision, this mesmerizing use of the supernatural in some cases and withholding of it in others, which gives the books their timeless, haunting quality.

About the Author

Carrie Sessarego is the resident “geek reviewer” for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, where she wrangles science fiction, fantasy romance, comics, movies, and non-fiction. Carrie’s first book, Pride, Prejudice, and Popcorn: TV and Film Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, was released in 2014. Her work has been published in Interfictions Online, Pop Matters: After the Avengers, The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 9, Invisible 3, Clarkesworld Magazine, and two volumes of Speculative Fiction: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary. She spends her time wrangling her husband, daughter, dog, and three cats.

Black Holes, Artifacts, and Mysteries:
A Conversation with Jack McDevitt

Chris Urie

Mixing archeology and mystery with science fiction makes for a heady and addictive reading experience. Jack McDevitt’s latest entry into his Alex Benedict series of novels, Octavia Gone, starts when an artifact goes missing from Gabe’s collection which leads the group to investigate the strange disappearance of a group of scientists from a space station orbiting a black hole.

Jack McDevitt is the author of over twenty novels and dozens of short stories. His two main series are the Alex Benedict Series and the The Academy Series. McDevitt has won numerous awards including the Nebula, Locus, Phoenix, and John W. Campbell awards. Octavia Gone, will be available from Saga Press May 7th.

How did you get into writing science fiction? I’ve heard that it happened in a movie theater in South Philadelphia. After a hiatus, what brought you back?

I grew up in South Philadelphia. The movie theater was the Bell, about four blocks from home. When I was about five years old, my father took me to watch westerns and airplane films about World War I because we were still a year away from Pearl Harbor. They’ve all faded. All that remains in my memory are Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. I loved them. Didn’t notice at the time that they traveled to other planets without an airlock or a washroom. I recall being unhappy though that Flash could find nothing better to do with Dr. Zarkov’s rocket ship than get into fights with Ming. I spent my time imagining what I would do with a rocket ship. So the reality was that the serials got me interested in astronomy as much as in SF.

AI features prominently in Octavia Gone. What do you think of the current state of AI and where it might be headed?

I hope that AIs won’t prove dangerous because, even if they do, I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to work on them. Anything we can make, we will, regardless of consequences. We don’t know yet whether we’ll be able to make true artificial intelligence, that is, machines that are self-aware. And I’m not sure how we’ll ever be able to run tests to determine the truth.

It’s apparent that throughout the series of Alex Benedict novels that you’re keenly interested in history. Are there any bits of history that have helped to inspire Octavia Gone?

Yes. But I can’t give that away without compromising the mystery.

After a number of novels, what is it about Alex and Chase that keeps you coming back to the characters?

They’re fun. Alex’s mysteries were inspired by the adventures of Father Brown. Not the TV version, but as we see him in Chesterton’s stories. The mysteries he faces are odd: Why did a British general, famous for protecting the lives of his troops, go completely bonkers in one battle, charging every hill that the enemy controlled, resulting in a catastrophic loss of his troops? How did a guy in a room near the top of a skyscraper, with no other buildings nearby, come to die with an arrow through his heart? And so on. The issue in almost all of the stories, which unfortunately have not been picked up by the TV series, is always not so much a matter of identifying the murderer, but figuring out what on Earth had happened. 

Does real life mimic your characters? Do you also collect antiquities? If so, what would be one dream artifact you’d like to have in your collection?

I have an interest in history. Would love to have Thomas Jefferson’s pen or JFK’s PT boat.

The novels in this series occasionally switch character perspective. How do you choose either Alex or Chase to write from?

Actually, the only one in which Alex is the narrator is the first one, A Talent for War. I hadn’t intended to bring him back in other novels. A few years later, I had an idea for another Father Brown-style mystery, in which an interstellar with some wealthy tourists vanishes and is later found adrift and empty, in an area where there was no place they could have gone. It was an ideal setup for Alex, so I brought him back. But I needed a character who would ask the questions that were in the reader’s mind. The same purpose that Watson serves. So I brought Chase back as well. And of course to fulfill that purpose she automatically became the narrator, a role in which she has served in each of the other novels. I should mention there was also Infinity Beach, a novel that appeared between the first two. It was also a mystery that Father Brown would have enjoyed taking on if he’d had an interstellar. And I realized belatedly that it would have been a perfect fit for Alex Benedict.

The science within your novels is clearly well researched. Considering the location of the space station Octavia when it disappears, what are your thoughts about the recent image of a black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope?

I got lucky. It looks pretty much like the object described in the book. Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of support on the science, especially from David DeGraff and Walter Cuirle.

What project are you working on next?

I’m finishing a short story in which Gregory MacAllister, the explosive newspaper columnist from the Academy novels, is the lead character. When that’s done, I’m going to take some time off, read, do a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that just arrived for my birthday, and sleep. I suspect that in the meantime, another plotline will show up.

What does your writing process look like?

I set a target each day, usually about a thousand words. Or possibly a scene or two. I don’t think in terms of starting at nine and working until, say, three o’clock. If I do that, I spend a lot of time stalling, looking out my window at cardinals and squirrels. Instead, I set an objective, and when I reach it, I quit and watch TV or just relax.

What is one piece of writing advice that you’ve been given that has stuck with you throughout your career?

Keep writing. Don’t take a couple of years off. We need to keep our readers interested and happy. So produce some output.

About the Author

Chris Urie is a writer and editor from Ocean City, NJ. He has written and published everything from city food guide articles to critical essays on video game level design. He currently lives in Philadelphia with an ever expanding collection of books and a small black rabbit that has an attitude problem.

Another Word:
It’s All Fun and Games

Alethea Kontis

Big news! Story sale! I’m going to be in an anthology releasing later this year. It’s a YA GamerLit anthology called Game On!

Hooray!

But wait! This is the same anthology that I was supposed to be a part of last summer, before it even had a name. It really will be coming out in Fall of 2019, and I’ll be in it.

But not in the way I was supposed to be.

Which is kind of okay. I mean . . . I’m a gamer. And the publishing industry, at its heart, is just a game. We choose a character and arm ourselves with whatever’s handy—the pen is mightier than the sword, right?—and head out into the world at Level 1, like blind little greenlings with a Charisma of infinity!

We know we’re going to face monsters and pitfalls. We know we will accrue damage points. But if we are lucky, we find our tribe—and heal ourselves. We get Experience Points (xp) and we Level Up. Our tools become better. Our stats get higher. And we learn how to work smarter, not harder.

Sometimes, of course, it’s hard. You try and you try and you try and can’t seem to finish a quest or have battled the same monster over and over.

But then sometimes, it ends up all working out anyway.

Game On! is a perfect Case in Point.

Here’s what happened:

Level 1

The Game On! anthology was originally slated for Summer of 2018. The ringleader was Anthea Sharp, owner of Fiddlehead Press, and when she asked me if I’d be on board for a YA GamerLit anthology, I didn’t hesitate.

The deadline was July 10th of last year and because of my own excitement about the project, I finished my story early. It was called “The Chaos Crushers’ Day Off,” about a dark guild of orc hunters who decide to tackle a role-playing game on their day off.

I was so in love with this story and these characters. Even my local SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) group gave excellent feedback. Beta readers also offered praise and I couldn’t wait for the anthology to be finished.

Level 2

Now, when we turn in our stories for some of the other anthologies that Anthea publishes in January, the finished product releases the next month in February. I assumed that since the stories were due in July, that the book would be out by August (before Dragon Con! Yay!).

Silly, Level 2 me. This proves true that old adage about assuming things and said practice creating a self-made ass out of u and me.

I wanted to announce the anthology at Gen Con, but we didn’t even have a title yet. Or a cover. I suspected the worst.

The anthology continued to not happen for Reasons. I sat on my story like a good little author, waiting.

Level 3

Now, it wasn’t like I wasn’t doing anything during this time. I had all sorts of side quests to keep me busy—most importantly, Dragon Con. Since I had a full hour to read at Dragon Con, I performed “The Chaos Crushers’ Day Off.” The response was tremendous. A seven-year-old boy giggled through the whole thing. My excitement continued to build about the project.

And after that hot and muggy week in Atlanta, I had to drive up north to see family. Then, I had a Picture Book Boot Camp with Jane Yolen. Continuing on, I had four more projects to write in December—an invite-only anthology, a Kickstarter anthology, a short comic anthology, and still yet another story.

Level 4

In early December, I was approached by IGMS Magazine for a short story reprint. Now, at this level, short story reprints are something of a very little gold mine that some authors don’t even know to pursue (I really should make more of an effort).

Of course, I said YES. But also, I had this original story still sitting in my trunk collecting dust.

I had promised the story to Anthea. But Game On! (we had a title, but still no cover) had been postponed indefinitely at this point, and I needed the money. It felt horrible and underhanded to sell this story to someone else. So, I did what any sane gamer would do in this instance: I phoned a friend.

Maurice Broaddus and I have been friends since we were both filling out our character stats. As a good friend should, Maurice will tell you that I’ve never been Level 0 in this industry, but you get the gist. I confessed my horrible thoughts and was met with silence on the line.

And then Maurice said, “What would Pic do?”

For those who don’t know, Tom Piccirilli was our Obi-Wan Kenobi back when we were just starting out. Heck, he still is my Ben. Because mentors like Pic are never really gone.

Pic would have pointed out that it’s business. Writing is our business. Letting perfectly good writing molder in the trunk is not good for business. Pic would have said all of that, in his thick New York accent, and then added a “Don’t be stoopid!” for good measure.

As soon as I got off the phone with Maurice, I told Anthea that I was pulling my story out of Game On! and promptly sold “The Chaos Crushers’ Day Off” to IGMS at pro rates.

Level 5

Of my slated aforementioned December projects, two were canceled before I even started the invite-only anthology and the comic anthology. I wrote another story for a different anthology called “True.love,” about how a bunch of hacktivists try to take down the world’s most perfect matchmaking site. It was like a fairy-tale “Ready Player One.”

Yes—my main character was a gamer.

Ironic, isn’t it? This story also would have been perfect for Game On! Oh, well. By now, Anthea had a cover and was planning a release.

In March, Anthea asked me about “Chaos Crushers’ Day Off.” She’d take a reprint, but it hadn’t even released yet. I wouldn’t have reprint rights back for a while. Boo.

Sometimes, when you’re a writer, timing just doesn’t work in your favor. It just stunk, because I really wanted to be in that anthology.

And then . . .

Level 6

Anthea sent me another email. “Would you consider including ‘True.love’ in the Game On! anthology?”

Of course, I didn’t hesitate!

I don’t even have to ask permission from the editor of the new project, Once Upon a Star, because Anthea is the editor. She’s the king of her own small press—she makes the rules, and she can break them if she wants to! She can also give out secret side quests.

I love that I was able to make it work by just being me and I effectively got to sell the story twice! Bonus! Reach the castle and claim my prize! But the game isn’t over. The game is never over.

This writing Princess will always be in another castle.

About the Author

Alethea Kontis is a princess, author, fairy godmother, and geek. Her bestselling Books of Arilland fairytale series won two Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Awards (Enchanted and Tales of Arilland), and was twice nominated for the Andre Norton Award. Alethea also penned the AlphaOops picture books, The Wonderland Alphabet, Diary of a Mad Scientist Garden Gnome, Beauty & Dynamite, The Dark-Hunter Companion (w/Sherrilyn Kenyon), and a myriad of poems, essays, and short stories. Princess Alethea lives and writes on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie.

Editor’s Desk:
I Don’t Want to Bother You

Neil Clarke

One of my favorite things about working in the science fiction field—even all the way back to my days as a bookseller—is the people I get to work with, be it staff, authors, artists, other editors, or fellow fans. Most days, I’m physically isolated from that world and as an introvert that actually works well for me. I’ve described my genre social life as feast-or-famine. When I go to a convention, writing workshop, or other genre event, I want to soak up every minute of the creative energy it gives, and then I crash. The two pair rather nicely, and upon returning home, it forces me to get back to work.

Despite being this close to the fire and having seen how the sausage is made, I can still get excited about working in this field and attending various events. Over the years, I’ve been both fortunate and unfortunate enough to meet some of my favorite authors and artists. By and large, those encounters have been positive, but sometimes people just aren’t what you expect. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe they’re jetlagged. Maybe they’re just rude. Maybe . . . I’d like to think I’ve become better at handling those situations as I’ve grown older, but I can still be intimidated meeting certain people. It’s not that I expect them to be awful, it’s more that I don’t want to bother them. At least that’s what I tell myself.

The sad thing is that I know it’s not true. Sure, it is possible you could bother someone, but for the most part, if they are attending these events they either want to or expect to meet people. I didn’t actually realize this until a few years after it was happening to me. I’d routinely get emails or messages from fans of the magazine or an authors saying “I saw you at XXX, but I didn’t want to bother you.” I always regret these missed connections and the last thing I want to be taken away here isn’t, “Don’t tell/approach Neil.” In fact, I’ve been doing some things to try to make it easier for people to introduce themselves. Before Worldcon, for example, I’ll post on Twitter that an excellent icebreaker is a simple “Happy Birthday.” Easy. Non-intimidating.

Writers, well, you always have the opportunity to collect a rejection card, that is, assuming you’ve sent me a story I’ve rejected. What is this card? Well, it’s a bit of a novelty item to mark your achievement of submitting a story to the magazine. The front bears the following image (which was one of our early covers):

And the back says, “The bearer of this card has been officially rejected by Clarkesworld. Please be nice to them.” (Some authors send me SASEs to get theirs, but I prefer handing them out in person.) Since it is always asked, if your story is accepted, you can’t get a card for that story. You get paid and have your story in print. Recently I’ve started giving them blue robot head buttons too. There are green ones for everyone else.

So what sent me down this path now? Later this month at the Nebula Awards Conference, I’ll have the opportunity to meet William Gibson for the first time. I read Neuromancer as a young computer science major in college and it had a significant impact on my connection to both of the fields I’ve worked in: technology and science fiction. I know that there’s a high likelihood that I’ll try to talk myself out of bothering him. He hasn’t done anything that should prevent me for thanking him for what that book did for me and even if he should turn out to be someone I might not like, he’s still deserving of that thanks. [This ability was a gift from my heart attack. “Life’s too short” makes it easier to move on.]  I’d regret not doing so later . . . there, now that I’ve said it, I have to do it. Well, that or be a poor role model!

Oh, and for the record, if you see me at a convention and I’m not actively heading somewhere or in the bathroom (definitely not in the bathroom), then feel free to say hi, happy birthday, or “do you have some of those cards with you?” Meeting people is one of the reasons I’m there.

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and The SFWA Bulletin; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a six-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, The Final Frontier, and the Best Science Fiction of the Years series. His most recent anthology, Not One of Us, was published in November by Night Shade Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Cover Art: Vertigo

Matt Dixon

About the Artist

Matt Dixon is a freelance illustrator and concept artist from the UK. Digital art first captured his imagination when he began to assemble images from ASCII characters on a Commodore VIC-20 way back in 1980. Happily, things have moved along a little and Adobe Photoshop allows him to achieve slightly more sophisticated results these days.

His long association with the games industry began when he first contributed art to a video game in 1988. He was employed by one of the UK’s largest independent games developers for more than a decade, initially as a production artist, then as an art lead. During this time he was privileged to be involved with numerous high profile game and movie licenses, including Harry Potter, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean.