Mom Heart

Will McIntosh

The front door banged open.

“Daddy! Dadd-deee!” Bluet wailed.

I rushed to Bluet.

Bluet’s eyes were wet. Karina hung back, blank-eyed, as Bluet bolted forward.

“Regan called Mommy dead.”

I wrapped Bluet in a hug. “I’m sorry.” My voice was muffled, my face pressed into Bluet’s hair. “That was not a nice thing to say.” Everything had to be a competition with Regan, and she always had to win. If she could win at Who Had the Most Mommies, she wanted to fucking play.

I held out one arm until Karina joined us reluctantly, then I squeezed them both, willing them to feel better, willing my strength to flow into them. Especially into Karina. Even from the back, I could feel Karina’s ribs.

As soon as I stopped squeezing, Karina slipped out of my arms and made a beeline for her room.

“I’m going to put out a snack in a minute,” I called to her.

Karina didn’t reply. I heard her door close.

She spent every possible moment in there, doing absolutely nothing as far as I could tell. All the progress she’d made, all the confidence, the social skills, the joy, had been wiped away in the course of one single, terrible, horrible day. It hurt to think of her in that room, sinking deeper into herself.

At this point, I didn’t know how much of it was her autism and how much depression.

I set out two chocolate éclairs, the most tempting, high-calorie snack I could think of. I’d given up caring whether the food was nutritious—I just wanted Karina to eat. And when you’d been given the semester off from teaching, you had all the time in the world to hunt down old-school bakeries.

“Bluet, Karina? Snack time,” I called.

Bluet appeared. No Karina.

I knocked on Karina’s door, then I opened it partway.

Karina was sitting on her bed rocking, staring down at her hands, her hair forming a hiding place for her face. Zelia had always tied Karina’s long, wild hair into a ponytail before school, but now Karina insisted on wearing it loose, so she could use it as a room to hide in.

“Come and have a snack. Please?”

Karina went on rocking. She had stopped doing that when she was four or five. Now it was starting up again.

“Please, Karina. At least come sit at the table?”

Nothing.

I went to Karina, and ever-so-gently lifted her face until she was looking at me. “Come sit at the table.”

Karina slid off the bed and slunk past me without a word. I followed her into the kitchen and pulled out her chair.

Karina stared down at the éclair.

“I got them at a bakery. They’re really fresh.”

Bluet swiped up a fingerful of whipped cream and held the finger out to Finster, who wagged his tail as he licked the whipped cream.

You were supposed to get a little better every day. Especially kids. Everyone said that. Don’t worry about the girls, kids are resilient. But if you already had a lot of challenges, losing your mother could be too much to snap back from.

Dr. Ferdinand said this was a critical period for Karina, that if she didn’t recover from Zelia’s loss now, it might change her trajectory right into adulthood. But every time I pictured my seven-year-old girl all alone at a psychiatric facility, it brought me to tears. Dr. Ferdinand didn’t know Karina the way I did. I felt this deep certainty that being alone in that hospital would just further traumatize her.

If she kept on this downward spiral, though, what other choice did I have?

I knew what Karina needed. She needed Zelia. Zelia had been the one who got Karina, who could connect with her. She was Karina’s bridge to the rest of the world.

The last thing Zelia had said to Karina was, I’ll be right back. I kept thinking that if she’d been able to say goodbye, Karina would have been able to get over losing her.

Bluet offered Finster a bigger piece of her éclair. Finster nibbled at it tentatively, knocking it out of Bluet’s hand and onto the floor before trotting away.

Our domestic bot, which had been scrubbing the linoleum floor, rose, its scrubbing brushes disappearing into its carbon fiber tube arms. It strode purposefully toward the glob of éclair on its wide, flat feet.

I smiled, remembering how Zelia had bristled that the bot had been given a vaguely feminine form by its manufacturer, and insisted on calling it Hank, which was, she said, the most masculine name in existence. The first time I referred to it as Larissa—the most feminine name in existence, according to me—Zelia had thrown back her head and laughed her husky laugh.

My phone rang—it was Zelia’s mom. I left the kids with their éclairs and went to my bedroom to answer it out of earshot.

Blessedly, she only wanted to check on their flight itinerary, and I was able to get off quickly, without the obligatory reminiscing. I was dreading Zelia’s parents week-long visit at the end of the month. Zelia’s mom insisted on talking about Zelia nonstop, telling anecdotes from her childhood that I knew were meant to be helpful, but only made things worse. Having my own parents around was more of a comfort, but they had their hands full dealing with Dad’s COPD.

I stepped into the hallway and almost collided with Hank/Larissa.

“Pardon me, Benji. I didn’t see you there.” Hank/Larissa passed with a stack of neatly folded, brightly colored girls’ clothes. I watched the bot pass. It was now a tiny balm that the domestic bot possessed those rounded contours that gave it a vaguely feminine appearance. It provided the slightest hint of a maternal presence, when that lack was like a black hole sucking all joy, all life from our family. Maybe I should ask Hank/Larissa to put on female clothes to play up that presence. We certainly had plenty of women’s clothes to spare. Karina refused to let me, or Hank/Larissa, get rid of anything of Zelia’s.

I let out an involuntary hack of gallows laughter as I imagined the bot going through Zelia’s closet, choosing something to wear. Sick thoughts.

I went to check on the girls, kicking Finster’s toy lamb out of my path. Finster wouldn’t play her lamb game with anyone but Zelia, so the lamb had become another memory that got booted from room to room.

Hank/Larissa appeared with the empty laundry basket, its blocky carbon-fiber face bland and vaguely cartoonish. “Pardon me, Benji. I hope you’re having a good day.”

I turned to watch the bot pivot on legs that were nothing but narrow pipes, its feet like flippers by contrast, but what my exhausted mind saw was Zelia, her knees turned slightly inward, her ponytail bobbing.

For an instant the vision was so clear I almost ran to her. Then Hank/Larissa was back, and I was left with a truly unhinged idea.

When I thought I had it right, I stepped back and raised the transmitter strapped to my wrist.

“Testing.”

The bot repeated what I’d said in Zelia’s lovely, scratchy alto. It took me a moment to collect myself, hearing her voice. It was as if she was suddenly in the bedroom with me, and all of this had been a long bad dream.

It might blow up in my face, but it also might make things better, and things needed to get better. They just had to.

What would Zelia think?

She’d approve. She’d be down with anything that could help Karina. And it was her sort of idea. Bold. Bizarre.

I lifted the microphone to my lips.

“Hello, Duckies.” The voice seared right through my heart. It would do the same to the girls.

That was the idea, though, wasn’t it? Convince them Zee was speaking to them for a few precious minutes. A few words from Zee would mean so much to Karina.

And really, how different was this from Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy? Parents created mythical benevolent figures all the time to provide comfort, to inject a little magic into the world. And when the kids were old enough to know they’d been punked, they were okay with it. How many kids wished they’d never believed in Santa Claus?

I tried the transmitter again. “Hello, Sunshine.” Zelia had called me “Sunshine,” insisting it wasn’t meant to be ironic, or at least not completely so.

I went to the bedroom and opened Zelia’s closet door. Before the accident I hadn’t realized Zelia had a scent all her own, now it wafted off everything she’d ever touched. It was lemon and puppy’s feet. A hint of brown sugar.

The phone rang: my friend Vincent, probably just checking on me. I sent the call to voicemail. Vince had really stuck by me through this, but I’d had so little time to devote to our friendship. I missed our trips to the movies, playing racquetball, gossiping about other faculty. There was just no time now.

Hands shaking, I sorted through Zelia’s clothes. What was her most iconic outfit, the one Karina and Bluet would most easily recognize? I rifled faster, wanting to finish. It hurt to see these shirts and dresses, each sparking half a dozen memories.

Sitting up against a wall in my closet, I guided the bot in a slow pan of the living room. Through the camera embedded behind the bots’ left eye, I saw Bluet watching cartoons, her face much too young for the dark sunken racoon-rings under her eyes. Karina was sitting at the kitchen table, head down, one leg swinging, doing nothing.

I felt excited, guilty, full of dread, hopeful, sad, uncertain. This was the last point where I could change my mind. I knew I wouldn’t. Crazy as this idea was, it felt right. I felt sure I could reach Karina this way.

Heart hammering, transmitting sensors strapped to my ankles, I jerked my legs straight out just as I’d practiced.

The bot’s feet flew out from under it. It clattered to the linoleum floor.

Startled, Bluet and Karina turned to watch the bot thrash on the floor like it was having a seizure.

“Daaad?” Bluet called. “Something’s wrong with the cleaning thing. And why is it wearing clothes?”

I didn’t answer—I had to stay out of sight and earshot for this to work. I stopped the bot’s thrashing and made it sit up slowly. It looked from Karina to Bluet.

“I made it,” I said into the wrist mic, my heart pounding so hard I was afraid I was going to fracture a rib. The bot repeated what I’d said in Zelia’s husky Brooklyn accent.

The girls froze.

“Karina? Bluet? It’s me.” I stood the bot up by drawing my knees up, placing my own feet flat on the closet floor, and tensing my quad muscles. “I don’t have much time. Just a few minutes, and then I have to go back.”

The girls gawked at the bot.

“Why do you sound like my Mommy all of a sudden?” Bluet asked.

The voice was right, but they weren’t buying it. The bot sounded like Mommy, but I wasn’t talking the way Zelia talked. It felt wrong to playact the part of my late wife to that extent, almost like I was mocking her. That’s what it was going to take, though.

I sat up straighter in the closet. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured Zelia in the kitchen, leaned up against the counter drinking tea made from some obscure bitter root while simultaneously scarfing Oreos, her bare shoulders covered in freckles, her ponytail poking out the back of a Kansas City Royals cap, because she loved the Royals, even though she’d never been to Kansas City.

“Let me get a look at my Duckies, see if your daddy’s been feeding you.” I reached out the bot’s arm to brush Karina’s chin. “You’re beautiful. Heavy duty cuties, both of you.”

The girls went on gawking, as if the bot had blown a gasket.

“Hey.” I moved the bot over to the candy jars lining one counter of the kitchen. “You want to binge on some sugar, dextrose, and red dye number five?” The bot lifted the lid off the Sour Patch jar. “I can’t partake, unfortunately, because I have no digestive system. But I can distribute.” The bot set a handful of Sour Patch Kids in Bluet’s outstretched hand.

Karina was gazing up at the bot, her eyebrows raised. “Mommy?”

I knelt Zelia-bot down, reached out, and brushed the tip of Karina’s button nose. “Bingo.”

Karina launched herself into the bot’s outstretched arms. She turned to Bluet. “It’s Mommy! It’s Mommy!”

Bluet’s eyes went huge and round. “Mommy?” She joined Karina in the bot’s arms. “What are you doing in there? Come out.”

Guilt flooded through me, blotting out every other emotion. Suddenly this felt like a terrible mistake, cruel and childish. But I couldn’t stop now. Not yet, anyway.

“I can’t, Sweetie. The bot let me borrow her body for a little while. I have some things I want to tell you that I didn’t get to say before I left. And then I have to go back.” What would Zelia want to say to them? I should have written some things down.

Don’t think. Just talk.

“This sucks. So bad,” I said as Zeliabot. “I hate being away from you guys. I miss you so much.”

“It was because of the accident,” Bluet said. “That’s why you went away.”

“It was. I never would have left you if I had any choice. But here’s the thing: I may not be here in my body, but I’m still all around you, all the time, wherever you go.” The words poured out. They felt right, felt Zelia. “Now, there’s something I need you to do for me.”

“What is it?” Karina wasn’t even blinking, she was so mesmerized.

“Even though you miss me, I want you to be happy. Laugh. Play with your friends. Karina, I’ve watched you moping in your room, and I don’t like it at all. You hear me? No more moping. Ride bikes. Get in trouble at school. Jump in some lakes. Watch some TV, for God’s sake! Can you do that for me?”

Karina nodded. “Now that you’re back, I can. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you so much, too!” Bluet piped in.

“I miss you munchkins, too. But I can’t stay,” I said. “As much as I hate the rules, they’re the rules. You have no idea how many strings I had to pull just to get a few minutes with you.”

Tears trailed down Karina’s cheeks. She grasped the bot’s hand. “Please. Please. There’s so much I have to tell you.” The expression on her face. The hope. The here-ness. When was the last time I’d seen such lucidity in those eyes?

I felt a plunging in my stomach. This was just going to reopen the wound, make it fresh and bloody all over again. It was going to tip Karina over the edge.

Karina clung to the bot, her face buried in Zelia’s sundress. “Please, Mommy. Don’t go.”

“I’ll come back,” I blurted.

“When?” Karina demanded through her tears.

“Tomorrow,” I promised. “After school.”

Karina’s face relaxed and flushed with color. “We can play one of our games.”

“We can do whatever you want,” I said. “Right now, though, I have to say adios. Be good, Duckies.”

“We will,” Karina said as Zeliabot went still.

I wasn’t sure whether to restore the bot’s autonomous settings and let it go back to doing chores, or to leave it deactivated. Maybe deactivated would be less confusing for the girls. I climbed to my feet and headed for the living room.

The girls surrounded me immediately.

“Daddy! Where were you? Mommy was here!” Bluet cried.

“It’s true!” Karina said. “You won’t believe it, but it’s true.”

I did my best to act awestruck and elated. I asked lots of questions.

“Aren’t you sad you missed her?” Karina asked. “Don’t worry, she’ll be back tomorrow. You can talk to her then.”

“Great.” I’d have Zeliabot explain why she and I could never be there at the same time.

As I rooted through the freezer seeking something to microwave for dinner, the girls talked and laughed excitedly. I’d have to navigate this carefully, but it felt so good to see life in Bluet’s eyes.

They came busting through the door after school. “Mommy? Mommy?”

They’d talked about nothing else, just one long breathless conversation about the things they wanted to tell Mommy, the games they’d play with her.

I rushed Zeliabot down the hall to greet them. “How are my babushkas?

Bluet grabbed Zeliabot’s hand and pulled. “Let’s go outside!”

“Why don’t we stay inside? We could play Godzilla Goes to Disneyland.” It would not be ideal for the neighbors to see Zeliabot.

“But it’s beautiful outside.” My unstoppable force of a daughter tugged Zeliabot’s hand. I just couldn’t say no. It would be good for the kids to get some fresh air and exercise. Let the neighbors think we were complete weirdos, if they didn’t already.

As soon as we were outside, Karina and Bluet headed for the bike path that led to the neighborhood playground. It was all of a hundred yards from the house, but suddenly it seemed like miles as I navigated our domestic bot, with its built-in brushes and floor-polishing capabilities, between our neighbor’s fenced yards.

Across the bike path from the playground, Regan’s dog Max greeted them with furious barking from behind his chain-link fence, kicking up divots in the grass as he tracked them. What a fantastic idea, to get a loud, angry dog that barked and snarled ceaselessly when your yard was right behind the playground.

“What should we do?” Karina asked Zeliabot as they entered the playground, which was blessedly deserted.

Zelia had always been busting with ideas for things to do. She’d announce on a random Friday that tomorrow was National Dominoes Day, and send me off to bake brownies, using chocolate chips to turn them into dominoes. There would be a slate of events. Each contestant would have to steer Finster through a minefield of dominoes without knocking any over. The kids would make domino-themed artwork. It was like a holiday only we celebrated. The girls loved those days.

I, on the other hand, was not busting with ideas. I was the boring parent who felt self-conscious about pretending to be Big Bird or a Powerpuff Girl.

“How about we fly?” I spread Zeliabot’s cleaning accessory-laden arms and ran her in loops around the playground equipment. Evidently this was sufficiently creative, because Bluet and Karina spread their arms and flew behind me, Bluet making enthusiastic airplane sounds.

Good ol’ Bob Stevens, who owned the house next to Regan’s family, was fertilizing his lawn. Zelia had dubbed him The Old Man and the Lawn, because Bob fancied himself a heroic figure in his battle against the twigs and acorns and weeds that marred the perfection that was Lawn. Bob paused to watch the proceedings.

“I’m pretty sure that’s Paris down there,” Zeliabot said. “You see the Eiffel Tower?”

“I see it!” Karina said.

“And look up there! A UFO! I think I see drunk aliens hanging out of it!”

“I see them!” Bluet pointed at the sky.

Regan appeared on her porch. I was tempted to have Zeliabot tell the girls it was time to go, but they’d only been there a couple of minutes. Regan squeezed through the gate as Max barked and jumped, trying to get out.

Zeliabot waved. “Hi, Regan, how are you?”

Regan stopped short. She looked at Karina. “Why does your bot sound like your mom?”

“Our mom came back!” Bluet cried. “She’s inside the bot.”

“No, she isn’t.” Regan eyed the bot. “You’re a liar.”

“Don’t call her that, or you can’t play with us,” Zelia said.

Regan considered. “What are you playing?”

“We’ve been flying around the world, but we’re about to start flying through time.” Zeliabot spread her arms and resumed gliding. The girls followed. “Do you want to pick our first destination?”

Regan spread her arms and joined the aerial procession, cutting in front of Karina and Bluet. I was tempted to tell her to go to the back of the line, but right now keeping her from interrogating Zeliabot about her authenticity seemed more important.

We were visiting prehistoric times, flying over a triceratops, when Bob Stevens, who’d been watching the whole time, barked “Jesus Christ.”

I had Zeliabot fly closer to Bob, setting off furious barking from Max. “How are you, Bob? How’s the lawn?”

“What is this?” Did Bob look annoyed? Confused? It was hard to tell with Bob—his default expression was pinched, squinty-eyed, just-bit-a-lemon.

“I’m just back from the dead for a while to visit my daughters.” I pulled my wrist away from my face and burst out laughing. That line was pure Zelia.

“Who’s saying that?” Bob demanded. “This isn’t funny, for your information.”

“It’s me, Bob. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

Bob studied Zeliabot for another moment, then turned and limped inside, shooting glances over his shoulder, looking like he’d seen a ghost. Or bit into a lemon. One or the other.

“This time with you, it’s so precious to me. I look at you both, and you’re luminous. I’m so grateful.” Zeliabot hovered over the kids as they ate the grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup she’d made. Karina was wolfing it down. “This has been so hard on you, but you’re going to be fine. You have fabulous lives ahead of you.” I grabbed the hand towel I kept handy to wipe tears. “I love you two. Always and forever. Don’t forget that.”

I had to start cutting back the frequency of Zeliabot’s “visits.” I knew that. But the girls were so happy when she was around, and that made me happy.

Finster appeared from out of the living room, carrying the toy lamb in his mouth. He dropped it at Zeliabot’s feet and looked up expectantly. I burst out laughing, which meant Zeliabot burst out laughing.

“You want to play the lamb game?” Zeliabot retrieved the lamb and hid it behind her back. Finster leaped into the air, ecstatic.

My phone rang.

“I have to rest for a few minutes,” I had Zeliabot say. “I’ll be right back.” I threw the lamb so Finster could chase it, then put Zeliabot in standby mode.

It was Ms. Vazquez, the principal at Karina’s school. As far as I could remember, she’d never called before. It was always the vice principal, or a teacher. After the bare minimum of pleasantries, Ms. Vazquez dove into the reason for the call.

“We’re all thrilled that Karina has finally turned a corner, but now that she’s talking again, she’s telling her classmates these stories. She’s insisting that her mother has come back.” She whispered the words come back, as if it were an obscenity, or a racial slur. “Has she been doing this at home at all?”

I stammered, let out an utterly inappropriate nervous bray of laughter. I guess I should have anticipated this.

“Actually,” I began. How could I put this that didn’t make me sound unhinged? “Here’s the thing. You know how dire things were getting. I know Dr. Ferdinand was keeping you updated, and you could see for yourself that Karina was getting worse instead of better.”

Ms. Vazquez’s tone softened. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be on both of them.”

“Karina’s sister is doing all right. As well as can be expected, anyway. But until last week, not Karina. I think it was the suddenness. Karina really struggles with transitions, as you know. If my wife had been able to speak to Karina before she died, to say goodbye, I think Karina would be handling it better.” I took a deep breath. “In fact, I know she would. Because out of desperation, I decided to pretend her mom has come back for a little while.”

There was a long, long pause. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“The next step was putting Karina in a psychiatric facility. I had to try something.”

“You’re saying this isn’t Karina’s imagination?” Ms. Vazquez sounded uncomfortable. Embarrassed, almost.

“I know it sounds strange, but it’s working. It’s the only thing that’s worked.”

Another long pause. The paranoid part of me felt certain she’d decided to start recording our conversation, to gather evidence of my insanity.

“I have to be honest,” she finally said. “I have no idea how to handle a situation like this. I mean, you can see why we can’t play along and humor Karina. I’ll have to consult with the school psychologist, and the superintendent.”

“I’m not asking you to humor her. Just say nothing. Smile and give her a pat on the head.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible. As I said, this is causing a stir among Karina’s classmates. They’re bringing the stories home.”

I was tempted to ask her why that was a problem. Before the accident, when Karina used to talk about school, she’d bring home all sorts of ignorant ideas her classmates parroted from their parents.

“Mr. Brody? Did you hear me?”

“I’m sorry, I missed what you said.”

“I said, I’d like to set up a meeting for next week.”

“Okay. Sure.”

I got off the phone as quickly as I could, and reactivated Zeliabot, already regretting agreeing to meet with them. I did not want to go to that meeting. They’d look at me like I was mentally unstable, demand I prove I wasn’t. Prove to us you’re not a danger to your daughters. I wasn’t up for that sort of grilling.

I took a second shot of rum. Zuma, the brand was. Zelia had picked it out. She’d liked how it went with her name. I hadn’t touched the bottle, or any other alcohol, since the accident. I knew if I’d started drinking, I wouldn’t stop, and I needed to take care of my girls.

Now, though, I needed liquid courage.

Zeliabot climbed out of Zelia’s Toyota Spark and headed for the entrance to Willowbrook Elementary as my heart pounded in time with her exceptionally loud carbon fiber footsteps. Parents leaving with their kids glanced at Zeliabot as they passed.

At the door, Zeliabot waited for a dad with a first- or second-grader to pass through, then caught the door before it closed, so she wouldn’t have to be buzzed in. I marched her into the main office and made a beeline for the conference room door in the back corner of the big space.

The secretary looked confused. “Why is the cleaning crew here already? Hey, the conference room is in use, you can’t clean in there yet!”

Zeliabot breezed into the room. “Sorry I’m late. Should I sit here?” Since domestic bots aren’t designed to sit—they don’t get tired, and typically don’t attend parent-teacher conferences—I had to sort of flop Zeliabot into the seat at an awkward angle.

There were three flabbergasted individuals in the room: Karina’s teacher, Ms. Hoffman; Principal Vazquez; and Ms. Prentiss, the school psychologist. They exchanged looks, deciding who should speak.

Finally Principal Vazquez said, “Mr. Brody, this isn’t funny. Are you outside? Would you please come in here?”

The question was, did I break character? I didn’t want to. I wanted Zeliabot to handle this.

“I’m sorry, but no, you’re talking to me.” Zeliabot poked her chest, which was covered by a tie-dyed yet tasteful blouse. “You seem to think I’m a problem, so I’m here to defend myself. Because the way I see it, Karina has been drifting in and out of this school for the past four months, and you haven’t managed to help her at all. No, wait, you taught her to add fractions! So, there’s that. Nice job.”

“Mr. Brody, we’re not doing this.” Ms. Vazquez was good at the tight school administrator tone.

“We’re going to do whatever it takes to help our girls, and if you’re offended or inconvenienced by our methods . . . ” I turned Zeliabot’s hands palm up. “Tough.”

Ms. Prentiss cleared her throat. “Mr. Brody, you may believe you’re helping Karina. She may even seem to be improving. But you’re only traumatizing her further. Her sister as well. You’re not allowing them to get past this.”

“Karina isn’t getting past this.” I thumped the table with Zeliabot’s hand for emphasis. “She’s getting worse. Or she was, until I showed up.”

Ms. Vazquez stood abruptly. “Okay, that’s it. I’m terminating this meeting.”

Ms. Hoffman and Ms. Prentiss stood dutifully.

“I’ll have to consult with the school district’s attorney to decide on next steps,” Ms. Vazquez said to Zeliabot, her tone heavy with threat.

“Our attorney will be happy to hear your explanation for why you’re harassing my husband about our family’s sincerely held religious belief that souls can inhabit robots.”

Ms. Vasquez swallowed like she was trying to force an egg down. I’d uttered the magic words. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? Don’t infringe on my religious freedom.

I had to drop Zeliabot to her hands and knees to get her out of the chair. As she stood, I extended her hand to Ms. Prentiss. “Thank you. I know how hard you work. I didn’t mean to imply you don’t care about Karina’s well-being.” Because that’s what Zelia would have said once she’d calmed down.

Ms. Prentiss shook Zeliabot’s three-fingered hand, looking wildly uncomfortable.

I thanked Ms. Hoffman and shook her hand as well. Ms. Vazquez breezed out before I could offer to shake hers.

The kids were waiting by the door when Zeliabot returned home. She took them into the back yard to play, and to talk.

“I can’t stay much longer,” Zeliabot said.

“Yes, you can,” Bluet said.

“No, I can’t, Ducky. Not much. But I’ll always be around, even though you can’t see me. And Daddy is here to take care of you.”

Karina looked toward the house, lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Dad doesn’t know how to play. We need your Mom heart.”

It felt as if someone had stomped on my chest. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.

How many times had the girls tried to get me to play one of Zelia’s silly games, only to have me say I had work to do, or I’d watch them play? I despised animated films, picture books, hearing the same happy bouncy songs over and over. Somehow, I thought they hadn’t noticed.

“I know, Sweetie. I know he doesn’t,” I finally said. “He’s loves you both so, so much, though. You know that, right?”

Karina nodded.

“But not as much as you do,” Bluet said.

“Just as much. I promise you. He’s just not good at showing it. But he loves you so much. He’d do anything for you.”

“Except play,” Karina whispered.

It was the only thing Zelia and I ever argued about. What I wouldn’t give to go back and jump into one of those games, and see Zelia’s surprised smile. I always figured I’d catch up when the girls were teenagers, when I could relate to them better.

“How come Dad can’t talk to you?” Karina asked.

“Like I told you, it’s just one of the rules,” I stammered. “I came back to talk to you. I can’t also talk to Daddy.”

“What if he just sits and doesn’t talk?” Bluet asked.

“It doesn’t work like that, Sweetie.”

“But it’s not fair,” Bluet insisted. “Daddy needs your Mommy heart, too.”

“Tell you what? While you and Karina are at school, I’ll come once just to visit Daddy. That won’t break the rules. Would that work?”

Bluet seemed disappointed that she wouldn’t be there. “Do you swear?”

“I swear,” Zeliabot said.

Zelia had always sat on the end of the couch next to the end table, which she referred to as the controlling side, since the remote was there, and there was space to set drinks and snacks. I perched Zeliabot in Zelia’s spot and sat in the glider-rocker across from the couch.

I gazed across at our domestic bot, with her big button eyes and cleaning attachments bulging under Zelia’s pink and blue sweater, feeling incredibly silly. I’d sworn, though, and I wasn’t going to break a swear I made to my daughter.

“It’s working. You’re helping her,” I said aloud, and immediately felt completely ridiculous. I also felt guilty for conversing with a domestic bot while Jack Lockley covered my classes. I was so grateful for my leave. I couldn’t imagine standing in front of a class right now and talking about operant conditioning and Sigmund Freud.

I lifted the transmitter to my lips. “We really got fucked over, didn’t we, Sunshine?”

It was a surreal echo-effect, hearing my own words, then hearing Zelia repeat them a beat later.

“Nine years,” Zeliabot went on. “Most couples get, like, fifty. We got nine.”

“They were good years, though.”

“They were. Not always easy, but they were always good. Remember the Disney World Trip?”

I nodded, sniffling. “I never laughed so hard.”

Zelia had gotten the idea of narrating aloud her moment-to-moment experience from some old movie.

Lines. Everywhere she looked, nothing but endless lines. The mother considered bolting, leaving the father with the children, and hiding in Winnie the Pooh’s Restaurant nursing an obscenely overpriced margarita.

Bluet had been two, too young to ride anything but the teacups, too young to know who the hell Mickey and Cinderella were. But Karina had been five, right in the Disney sweet spot. The rest of us had drafted off her exuberance.

I allowed myself to remember, even though it hurt. Zeliabot waited patiently, wedged awkwardly against the sofa, her pipe legs poking out of a peasant skirt.

“I’m kind of lost here without you, Zee.”

“Not completely lost,” Zeliabot replied. “You saved Karina. It was a brilliant idea, Sunshine, it really was. Now, how do I make a graceful exit before we lose our kids to child services?”

“I was hoping you’d know,” I replied.

“Trust the universe,” Zeliabot said. “Every so often, it provides a tiny window of opportunity.”

That’s what she would have said, or something like it. She’d always had more faith in the universe than I did.

Standing in the shadow of the big slide-bridge-castle structure on the playground, Bluet linked arms with Karina, ready for their next challenge.

“All around you, land-squids with fire breath are waving their tentacles.” Zeliabot waved her arms, illustrating the peril the girls were in. “One of the tentacles reaches out, trying to grab you!”

Bluet screeched in terrified glee as the girls rushed forward a few steps to avoid the imaginary tentacle.

“Careful you don’t fall off the walkway!” Zeliabot pointed at the ground. “There’s a squiggly part up ahead.” I was kind of proud of this game I’d invented—sort of live Dungeons and Dragons.

The back door of Regan’s house opened, and Regan appeared on her back porch. I silently willed her to go back inside. I wasn’t in the mood.

“What are you doing?” Regan hurried down the porch steps, ran toward the gate as I cursed silently.

“We’re playing Dungeons and Dragons,” Bluet called. “Want to play?”

Regan opened the gate just enough to squeeze through.

Max leaped and hit the fence with his front paws, knocking Regan to the ground. Free of the fence, he charged Bluet and Karina, teeth bared, spitting foam.

I raced Zeliabot to intercept the dog. Max charged at the bot. Snarling, he leaped and clamped his jaws on her raised arm. Zeliabot toppled backward.

“UP ON THE SLIDE!” I screamed. “RUN! HURRY!”

Max went for the girls. I reached out as the dog’s hind legs passed over Zeliabot and managed to grab one of them. Hobbled, Max thrashed at the wood chip-covered ground. Zeliabot clung to his back haunch. I tried to squeeze it harder, to break his fucking leg, but the bot’s grip-strength was limited by design.

Max dragged Zeliabot along the ground toward the steel steps that led up to Karina and Bluet.

He was halfway up when Zeliabot reached the bottom step. I grasped the bottom of the handrail; Max jerked to a stop.

He spun, bit the bot’s wrist, and shook his head violently side to side. Zeliabot held on. I reached out with her other hand, got hold of Max’s collar, then jammed Zeliabot’s hand between the collar and the dog’s neck and pulled, forcing Max’s head down.

Max was snarling and biting, fighting to break free. Regan was shouting at him, but he ignored her. He was finally out from behind that fence, maybe for the first time in his life, and he was intent on biting someone, anyone.

There was nothing more I could do as Zeliabot. I burst from the closet, grabbed the aluminum bat I kept by the front door, and sprinted toward the park.

As I ran, I kept picturing Max breaking free, turning toward my girls . . .

I drew within eyeshot, saw Regan’s mother burst through the back door. “Jesus Christ. Max! No! How did he get out?”

As soon as Regan’s mother, whatever her name was, got hold of Max’s collar, he shut up, or at least toned it down to an urgent whine. She pried Zeliabot’s grip off of him and dragged him roughly toward the gate as I raced to my girls.

I studied Karina and Bluet as they sipped their juice boxes. “You’re sure you’re okay?” I rested a hand on each of their tiny shoulders.

“Fine,” Karina said.

“Me, too,” Bluet echoed.

“I knew Mom wouldn’t let Max hurt us,” Karina said. “Is she okay? Why isn’t she talking?”

I glanced over at Zeliabot, lying on the couch, her pinstriped chinos and Greta Van Fleet T-shirt soiled and torn, teeth marks covering her wrist and hand, her arm only connected to the torso by a handful of wires. She was going to need serious repair work.

And then what? Even if I could hold off the school and somehow survive a visit from Zelia’s folks, soon Karina would be eight, then nine. She didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore. How much longer would she believe in Zeliabot?

This was the moment. There would be no better time than right now.

“I’m going to go rest a little.” I headed into my room, into my closet.

I activated Zeliabot for the last time.

“Hello, Duckies.” I struggled to keep the sadness out of my voice.

The girls leaped up, shouting, “Mommy! Mommy!” and ran to Zeliabot.

“Are you all right?” Karina asked. “We were so worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Sweetie. This is just a bot. It’s not me.” I sat Zeliabot upright as best I could. “But the bot is too damaged to fix.”

“Oh, no!” Karina wailed.

“No, it’s okay. You’re safe now. I’ve done everything I came here to do.”

Bluet grabbed Zeliabot’s hand. “Mommy, no.”

“It’s okay, Duck. I’m always here. Always. Even when you can’t see me.”

“It’s not the same, if we can’t see or hear you.” Karina was crying.

“It’s not. I know. But it’s still good knowing I’m here. Isn’t it?”

The girls didn’t reply.

“I need you to tell me you’re going to be okay,” Zeliabot urged. “That you’re going to be happy. Will you do that for me?”

“No,” Karina said. “You can’t go. No.”

Zeliabot brushed Karina’s wet cheek. “You can do this, Ducky. We have to say goodbye, even though it’s hard. Please. For me. Do it for me.”

Sobbing, Karina wrapped her arms around Zeliabot. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mommy,” Bluet cried. “Goodbye.”

“I love you both. Always remember that.” As I dropped my wrist, Zeliabot added, “And you too, Sunshine.” Even though I hadn’t said those words.

I set Zelia’s damaged body in the back seat of the car. Karina and Bluet stood by, crying quietly.

I went and knelt by them. “It’s okay. Mom’s mom heart is still here. Remember how we promised Mom we’d be happy?”

The girls nodded reluctantly.

“Let’s show Mom we’re keeping our promise. Why don’t we play one of her games? She’ll see we’re being happy, just like she asked.”

Bluet looked surprised. “You’re going to play, too?”

“I told you, Mom left us her mom heart. From now on I play all the games.”

I took the girls’ hands and urged them toward the back yard. These early moments seemed crucial, to keep the Zelia-energy flowing.

And you too, Sunshine. I kept replaying those words in my mind, hearing them in Zelia’s voice.

There was an obvious explanation. Hank/Larissa had glitched, and said something from its bank of platitudes, and I’d misheard it.

I decided I didn’t believe that explanation. I believed the numinous, mystical explanation.

The Zelia explanation.

I burst onto the lawn, my Ducklings on my heels, and spread my arms.

About the Author

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and finalist for the Nebula and other SF/F awards. His novels include Defenders, Love Minus Eighty, and Soft Apocalypse. Along with nine novels, Will has published around fifty short stories. He was a psychology professor before turning to writing full-time, and lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife and their twins.

Dark Waters Still Flow

Alice Towey

The nitrogen was rising in my aeration basins as an autumn wind scattered crimson leaves on the water.

It was a chill wind for this time of year, when the late rays of the farsun normally add a final burst of summer; it was going to be a long, cold winter. As I surged my aerators, bracing myself for the heady rush of oxygen against my sensors, I remembered a stanza from Serren Dha, my favorite poet:

red leaves thick on the harbor streets

as your ship sails into sunsdown:

I dream of spring.

Oxygen flowed into my basins until the leaves disappeared in a bubbling froth. That would take care of the nitrogen levels, but I still didn’t know why so many things were going wrong; for decades, I’ve been able to treat all the wastewater that Zavin City sends me with little complaint, but in the past three months I’d experienced a constant series of malfunctions. Overnight several pieces of my equipment had failed, even before the nitrogen spike.

For now, all my processes were functioning normally—my filtration racks susurrated, my digesters churned, and clear water swirled through my effluent channel. From my southernmost camera I saw a heron alight on a tree at the edge of the lagoon, its slender neck curved to watch the nutrient-rich water for eels.

“Good morning, NEWT,” Nixil called from my control room. “What’s happening in the aeration basins?”

Shifting two percent of my processing capacity to the control room camera, I saw Nixil hang his coat on the back of his chair. He studied the holo monitors, forehead wrinkled.

“Nitrogen levels were twenty percent above normal,” I said through the intercom. “I increased the oxygenation to compensate.”

“Well done.” Nixil smiled. “Let’s increase the influent pump rate by ten percent. And I see the filters were down overnight; I’d like a full report.”

Nixil was the third of his family to work as a Water Sage, after his father and great aunt. He had exceptional attention to detail, and I was relieved that he was back on shift. As I described the night’s events, I diverted a trickle of processing capacity to watch a Junior Sage enter the staff building and settle at her desk.

“Good morning, Jerafina,” I said softly from her console speaker. “How are you?”

Jerafina always wore the traditional Miaran gloves and mouth covering, a cultural relic of the plagues that drove her people to seek refuge in Zavin a hundred years before. Today her gloves matched the dark blue of her uniform, but the scarf wrapped around her neck, just covering her mouth, was a striking violet. “Hello, NEWT. I’m fine.” Her eyes sparkled. “The morning weather is very cold. I find it’s already getting old.”

I increased processing capacity to formulate a response. In the control room, Nixil was questioning me about the filtration system; out on the edge of the lagoon, the heron pulled back its neck, tensed. “When cold autumn winds do blow, expect that soon you’ll see some snow.”

Jerafina stifled a laugh with her fist. “Very good, NEWT! You’re getting better.” She nodded toward the control room. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m afraid so. My filtration system clogged repeatedly overnight, and the pump well backed up. Then this morning there was a sudden increase in nitrogen levels. I’m still concerned about the filters; can you check them?”

“Of course; let me log in first.” There are some things I need a Sage for, and Jerafina is always willing to help.

“At least he can’t blame you for the nitrogen spike,” she murmured, so low I could barely hear her.

Out on the lagoon, the heron’s head whipped forward, snatching an eel from the water.

Some things would be easier if I were a human.

I like to imagine myself as one, when I’m alone at night and have extra processing capacity. I’ll picture a silver-haired woman, face etched with laugh lines, free to stroll the lagoon paths or read a book of her choosing.

I like books; I’ve read twenty-three. Occasionally a Sage will download one onto my server from the municipal library system and I can read it. I’ve kept copies of every book I’ve ever read. Most are fiction or histories; sadly, none are poetry.

I wish I had a complete book of Serren Dha’s poems.

I don’t have access to the municipal network, of course; only Sages do. A firewall protects me from malicious programs that could damage my operating systems or cause me to do terrible things to the lagoon. I am grateful for the firewall.

I followed Jerafina, camera to camera, as she inspected the plant, starting at my influent pump station and tracing the flow of water downstream. She walked along my disinfection channel, a small figure in a long blue coat billowed by the wind, pausing occasionally to check instrumentation.

In my filtration building, she studied the racks of murmuring pipes before pausing in the pump room. “NEWT?”

“I’m here,” I said from the building speaker.

She pointed at a control panel. “Do you know why this pump is in manual mode?”

I zoomed in; I had no record of anyone resetting it. “I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Jerafina stood by the pump for fifteen seconds.

As she reentered the staff building, Nixil stepped out from the control room. “Jerafina. Where have you been?”

She froze, shoulders raised. “The filtration building. NEWT said there was a problem.”

“You should have checked with me first,” Nixil said. “You’re a Junior Sage. Your job is to assemble data for the daily report, not wander the plant like a vagabond.”

Her gloved hands jerked into fists, and her breathing accelerated; but she took a long, slow breath and opened her hands. “Of course, Senior Sage. My apologies.”

Back at her desk, she sat hard in her chair, cheeks reddened above her scarf. She opened her holo console and began to type rapidly.

“Nixil can be abrupt,” I said, “but it’s only because he’s so dedicated. His family has a long history working with Zavin City’s utilities; I think he feels he has a legacy to live up to.”

She shook her head. “I don’t doubt that. But what he said—he called me a vagabond. Do you understand how insulting that is, to a Miaran?”

I couldn’t think of a response. Jerafina was the first Miaran I’d met, but I was aware of the prejudices they faced. I had watched a previous generation of Sages react to the refugees arriving desperate and haunted at Zavin City’s ports; had heard the next generation discuss the protests and the quotas. Lately, though, I had noticed Sages nibbling on Miaran pastries in the break room or humming Miaran folk tunes. I had hoped that meant the city was becoming more tolerant.

Nixil closed the control room door. “NEWT? Did Jerafina find anything unusual this morning?”

I could only see her profile as she manipulated the holo console; her long fingers were elegant in their movements, but occasionally she paused to stare down at her blue-gloved hands. I told him about the filtration pump. “I don’t know how it got switched to manual mode, but that would explain why the system failed.”

Nixil sat at his console, his foot tapping the floor. “NEWT, I’m worried about you.”

“Me, Senior Sage?”

“We’ve had so many issues lately. I worry that you’re malfunctioning.”

I thought I had been operating within normal parameters. “I don’t think I’m malfunctioning, Senior Sage.”

He turned from the camera, his head tilted up to view the holo monitors. “You might not realize it if you were. Keep me appraised of anything unusual.”

“Of course, Senior Sage.”

That night my processes remained comfortably stable, and though the wind rushed though me it did not trouble my waters. I heard the strange, low cry of a water owl out on the lagoon, and I was pleased that the waters I treated were home to so many creatures.

Still, I kept replaying the conversation with Nixil. If I was malfunctioning, would I even notice? Perhaps I couldn’t trust my own judgment—an unsettling thought. Resolving to better monitor myself, I initiated a series of diagnostics on all my processes.

A winged shape took flight over the lagoon. I zoomed in with my nearest camera, and although the image was grainy, it was lovely: a single water owl, briefly silhouetted against the moon. If I were a poet like Serren Dha, I would write a stanza about the delicate curve of its wings, the neat tuck of its claws, how its solitude reminded me of myself. But I’m not a poet; I put the thought aside and chastised myself for losing focus on my work.

Jerafina arrived in the dim light of first dawn. Today, her black gloves and mask were filigreed in silver in a traditional Miaran pattern. She prepared a mug of tea in the break room and sat at her desk.

“Good morning, NEWT.” She’d noticed the slight whir of the desk-side camera. “How did everything go last night?”

“Quite calm. I saw an owl take flight.”

She laughed. “Truly? Or are you just rhyming with me?”

“Truly!” I sent a still image to her console. As she opened the file, I realized I could always tell when she was smiling, even if I couldn’t see her mouth; her cheeks lifted, and tiny wrinkles formed at the corners of her eyes.

The nearsun rose, and the flow of water through me increased as the people of Zavin City woke and began their days. I adjusted pump rates and opened channels as Jerafina assembled data for the daily report.

She leaned forward, squinting at her console. “What’s wrong with the aeration basin outflow pumps?”

Normally two of the three pumps are operating; that had been the case ninety minutes before. Now all three were off, and water was backing up in the basins and upstream channels. Worse, none of my alarms had notified me of the issue. I reoriented a nearby camera—one of the basins had filled close to overflowing, risking a spill of partially treated sewage into the lagoon.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said. “I’m afraid.”

As Jerafina ran from the staff building, I frantically checked all my other systems: bar screens, sludge pumps, filtration, electrical, disinfection—everything else seemed fine. I sent an urgent message to Nixil, but he was likely still in transit.

Jerafina reached the pump station and knelt in front of the control panel. “I can’t get pumps one and two back on!”

Pump three was older, and I only ever used it as a backup. As she struggled to restart it, I diverted influent flows to a holding tank. I ran a quick calculation; even if she got pump three running, it wouldn’t have enough capacity on its own. “There’s an old portable pump in the disinfection building. We can use that to siphon more flow.”

Jerafina nodded, still bent over the control panel.

I couldn’t zoom in enough to see what she was doing and no data was coming in. I felt useless, an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation; I wished I was that silver-haired woman, so I could kneel next to Jerafina and help her. But all I could do was send another message to Nixil.

After thirteen tense minutes, there was an awful grinding noise, and pump three shuddered to life. Jerafina watched it for twenty-seven seconds before standing. “OK. Where’s that portable pump?”

I directed her to an old storage closet. Two other Sages arrived for day shift and helped her connect it with a series of wide, flexible hoses.

Immediate crisis averted, I shifted processing capacity to replay that morning’s events. I had checked my systems carefully all night; nothing had seemed wrong with the aeration basins, and pumps one and two had been operating normally. I didn’t understand how they could suddenly stop without any alarms going off.

Nixil arrived, sprinting through the main gate straight to the aeration basins. “What’s going on?”

Jerafina started to respond, but he waved a hand to quiet her and gestured to Sezzidh, an older Sage.

As Sezzidh explained, Jerafina stood with her back straight, eyes squeezed shut.

Hours later, my processes had mostly returned to normal. The aeration basin water level steadied, and the Sages got one of the broken pumps working again. High overhead, the brightness of the nearsun cut through the chill morning fog.

“NEWT,” Nixil summoned me from the control room. “What happened this morning?”

“I don’t know, Senior Sage. The pumps were working and then suddenly they weren’t. I didn’t receive an alarm; Jerafina discovered the problem.”

Nixil’s nose wrinkled at the mention of her name. “Or she claimed she discovered the problem. It’s hard to trust someone whose mouth you can’t see when they speak.”

It took me three seconds to respond. “It’s a Miaran cultural practice to keep the hands and mouth covered.”

Nixil sighed and shook his head. “I’m aware of that, NEWT. I know you like Jerafina, but you don’t live out in the city; you don’t know all the problems these people are causing. My family has been here for generations. Anyway, it’s my job to protect Zavin City, and right now we need to deal with the problem at hand. After this morning, I’m convinced that you’re malfunctioning. I’ve no choice but to try a partial reboot.”

“Are you sure, Senior Sage?” I’d only had a partial reboot once, early on in my life; it had left an uncomfortable six-month gap in my memory. My last backup had been four months ago, meaning I’d lose four months of data and experiences. And if something went wrong, Nixil might have to do a full reboot, resetting me and erasing all my memories.

“I’m afraid so. We’ll start tomorrow.”

He explained the process. First he would switch all my treatment processes over to manual control, then he’d run a diagnostic on my core. That would take most of the day; he would conduct the reboot itself overnight, when flows were lowest.

I listened, but most of my processing capacity was focused on a different problem.

The nearsun had already disappeared below the horizon, but Jerafina was still at her console. I should let her finish and return home, but there was no one else I could ask.

“Jerafina?” I spoke softly, and she turned to face my camera. “Nixil plans to reboot me.”

“What?”

“Just a partial reboot, from backup. I’ll lose four months, so it will be like we are newly acquainted. Please don’t be offended if I don’t remember things, like our rhyming game.”

“Why is he rebooting you? I don’t think you’re the problem, NEWT. I was reviewing this morning’s records, and the firewall was down for two hours overnight, right before the pumps died. I just sent Nixil a message about it.”

That gave me pause, but I continued. “Perhaps there is a malicious program. Nixil will investigate it. But he wants to make sure that I’m operating correctly, for the health of Zavin City and the lagoon. He thinks a reboot will help.”

“Nixil isn’t always right, NEWT.”

He was my Senior Sage; I couldn’t question his judgement, and I didn’t want to get distracted. “I need to ask a favor.”

Jerafina’s eyes widened. “A favor?”

I imagined a gray-haired woman, taking a deep breath before speaking.

I told her about my collection of books: twenty-three volumes, carefully collected and stored through the years. I told her about my favorite poet, Serren Dha, whose father had been a Senior Sage a hundred years ago; how he’d rolled his eyes whenever he talked about his daughter, wasting her time studying literature; but then at night, alone, he smiled as he read her poems aloud. Years later, when her first book was published, he carried it with him in his valise: a slim, burgundy volume he lifted out in quiet moments, his lips moving soundlessly as he read. I’ve always wished I had the courage to ask him to share those additional poems with me.

“Could you keep a backup copy of these files? Just in case something goes wrong. I hate to think of not having my poetry and books.”

Jerafina’s eyes glistened. When she spoke, her voice stuttered like a pump unable to start. “Of course, NEWT.”

Sometimes it is a relief, at night, when I’m alone.

I have loved all my Sages over the years, but I do enjoy the solitude at night, when I can read my books and watch the lagoon undisturbed, with nothing to remind me that I’m not human. I’m grateful for my existence, and I know I’m lucky to have such an important purpose; but sometimes I wish I could choose my own path, the way humans do.

That night, I reread all the books in my collection. I focused my cameras on the lagoon and watched its creatures prowl and swim and fly, vague figures in the low night mist.

I read and reread a poem of Serren Dha’s:

Festival night:

music of string bands,

hands clapping, cups clinking;

but all I hear

is the call

of a lone raven.

Nixil arrived promptly at firstdawn to begin the reboot process.

He paced in my control room, breathing ten percent faster than usual; perhaps he was as nervous as I was. He recited a set of codes I hadn’t heard since I was first commissioned.

“Nutrient Extraction and Water Treatment System.” The words emerged from my intercom without my having spoken them. “Process controls switched to manual.”

I tried increasing the flow rate in a small chemical feed pump; nothing happened. I had access to all my sensors, cameras, and instrumentation, but I could no longer control any of the pumps or filters. It seemed to only affect the treatment processes; I could still operate the auxiliary systems like the lighting and HVAC.

“That should do it,” Nixil said. “See you later, NEWT.”

He must not have realized that I was still aware, still listening. He grabbed his coat and left the control room. He walked out of the staff building.

He hadn’t initiated the diagnostic on my core.

My intercoms still worked, and I wondered if I should remind him about the core diagnostic; but Nixil was a Senior Sage, he didn’t forget things like that. Perhaps he planned to run it later. He might be upset to learn that I was still conscious. Besides, he was already busy with operating the plant manually; he didn’t need me bothering him.

I would tell Jerafina; she would know what to do.

Sezzidh and another Sage arrived. Running the plant in manual kept everyone busy that morning. By noon Jerafina still hadn’t arrived. I zoomed in on the shift schedule posted in the break room; Jerafina’s name had been scratched off day shift and assigned to help Nixil run the plant overnight.

While the other Sages ate their midday meal, Nixil returned to the control room, shutting the door firmly behind him. Surely now he’d start the diagnostic scan; but instead he removed a small data drive from his pocket, plugged it into the console, and uploaded an encrypted program to my server. I couldn’t tell what the program did, but he set a timer to run it that night.

Nixil had been my Senior Sage for over a decade. He had guided me through floods, process upsets, and a complete rebuild of my concrete basins. I trusted him. But this program scared me.

I was relieved when Jerafina arrived for the overnight shift. She stopped by the aeration tanks to chat with Sezzidh, but I couldn’t hear their conversation. As she sat down at her console, I spoke in a bare whisper. “Jerafina?”

She jumped. “NEWT! I’m so glad to hear you.”

Nixil was in the filtration building, walking along the rack of filters. “Nixil hasn’t started the reboot yet. I don’t think he knows I’m still conscious.”

I told Jerafina about the strange program he’d installed. “Do you think it might be some new diagnostic?”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” she whispered. “Something is very odd. He never responded to my message about the firewall. Then I was supposed to report this morning, but he sent me a note at the last minute telling me I was on night shift with him, alone.”

Nixil left the filtration building, heading back toward us. “He’s on his way,” I told Jerafina.

She nodded. “I’m going to talk to him.”

Thirty seconds later, Nixil entered the staff building. Jerafina stood, pulling her gloves tight and adjusting her scarf. She knocked on the control room door.

Nixil glanced up, his mouth a thin line. “Good, you’re on time. The diagnostic didn’t find any issues with NEWT’s core, so we can start the reboot now.”

For decades, I’ve heard humans describe negative emotions as a feeling in their stomach—a sinking sensation, a heaviness, a knot. Now, I understood what they meant. I felt like my circuitry had turned to lead.

Jerafina was braver than me. “Nixil, you never started the diagnostic. You uploaded a program that’s set to run in ninety minutes. The firewall has gone down every night for the past three months, and you’re the only one with the access code for it. What’s going on?”

Nixil stood, his face red. I expected him to argue or to castigate her insolence. What I didn’t expect was for him to reach his arm back, hand curled into a fist, and punch her in the face.

“Jerafina!” I called out as she fell. “Nixil, what are you doing?”

“NEWT? You’re still here?” He turned to his holo console and began typing, de-encrypting the program he had uploaded and resetting its timer. I could finally see it for what it was: a virus that would shut down the entire treatment process, allowing the untreated waste stream with all its industrial chemicals and biological wastes to flow straight into the lagoon. It would take years for the ecosystem to recover.

And he planned to blame Jerafina. I remembered his earlier comments about Miarans. This would start riots; people could die.

As Nixil began reciting the code to start the reboot, Jerafina rose soundlessly to her hands and knees. Her scarf had slipped; for the first time ever, I saw her mouth. Her lip was swollen and bleeding. Dazed, she touched a glove to her face; it came away smeared with blood.

“Nixil, please, stop!” I begged.

At that moment, Jerafina staggered to her feet and rushed out of the control room.

“Damn it!” Nixil turned to pursue her.

Jerafina fled, Nixil following behind. Outside, she swerved around the sedimentation tanks, then ran for the filtration building. She sprinted into the pump room and hid behind an electrical panel.

I needed to get help. I tried to circumvent the firewall so I could send a message or sound an alarm, but it held firm.

Nixil stepped inside the filtration building. I turned off the main lights, but the emergency lighting came on automatically, a red glow that reflected in his eyes. I ran through all the systems still available to me. Could I use the intercom to call for help? No, the speakers weren’t loud enough to be heard in town.

“Come out, Jerafina,” Nixil stalked along the edge of the room, checking between the racks of filters.

Suddenly I realized: the backup power supply.

A decade ago, a generator had been installed for the staff building; it was not a treatment process, so I could still control it. If I bypassed the transfer switch and backfed the generator into the building while the municipal power was still energized, it would blow the transformer, causing an alarm at the Zavin City fire brigade. It was risky; if the building caught fire, it could destroy my main server. I would be gone. But Jerafina would be safe, and the treatment processes could continue in manual mode.

I might not be a human, but this was something only I could do, to protect my friend and the lagoon.

Nixil had finished searching the filter gallery. He picked up a large wrench and headed toward the pump room.

“Jerafina, he’s coming,” I said. “Run!”

She darted from the pump room, just feet from Nixil, and ran to the back door, pulling down a rack of equipment as she went. Tools and pipe came crashing down. I disabled the backup power transfer switch and turned on the generator.

“The lagoon,” I said as she emerged from the building. “Run for the lagoon!”

Power flooded through me, my circuits crackling. I turned on every light, console, and appliance in the staff building to increase the draw.

Jerafina disappeared behind a stand of trees. Nixil erupted from the filtration building and ran after her.

I wanted to warn her that he was right behind, but at that moment the transformer exploded. Nixil skidded to a halt as arcs of wild blue fire rose into the sky. A vast hum filled the air, and reflections of the spectral blue light danced on the water.

I had only a fraction of a second to notice how beautiful it was, before everything went dark.

The nearsun was setting over the lagoon, casting pink and orange stripes over the water, when Jerafina and I said our goodbyes.

Wildflowers brightened the lagoon paths. A heron nested in a tree within camera range, delighting me with the prospect of hatchlings.

Jerafina sat at a bench outside the staff building. She craned her head to watch a crew of laborers put the finishing touches on the roof. “The place actually looks better now.”

“Yes,” I said. “With all these upgrades, I think I shall be the finest plant in all of Zavin.”

Jerafina nodded, her eyes unfocused in thought. It had been six months since the fire and Nixil’s arrest; now that the trial was over, she was leaving to take a post at a smaller treatment plant in a distant city.

It had been a challenging six months for me, as well. The electrical overload had damaged my communications hub, leaving me without access to sensors or intercoms for a month until the Sages could fix it. It had been uncomfortable being in the dark for so long, but better than the alternative; at least my core had not been affected. We’d both been so preoccupied, we’d barely had a chance to talk.

“Are you sure you want to leave?” I had been practicing my words for weeks. “Jerafina could decide to stay. And be my Senior Sage, someday.”

She looked down at her hands—gloved in a fine red silk today, to match her beautiful mask. “That’s a lovely rhyme, NEWT. But I can’t stay here. Too many bad memories.”

“I understand.” The trial had been ugly. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

When she looked up, her face had brightened; there was that sparkle in her eyes, and I could tell she was smiling. “NEWT. I’ve been so busy with the trial, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I wrote a new program for you—think of it as my going away present. I just installed it; it should finish running by tomorrow morning.”

“A program? For me? What does it do?”

“It’s downloading a copy of the entire municipal library to your server.”

It’s quiet at night. All my processes are running smoothly: filters humming, aeration tanks swirling with oxygen. Out on the edge of the lagoon, the heron warms its eggs, and the moon glow ripples on the water.

I imagine a silver-haired woman walking through a darkened library. She moves quietly, reverently, past row upon row of shelves. She stops at a section of older books, tracing a finger over their spines. She selects a slim, burgundy-covered volume, and opens it to read.

Love, keep watch on the river

even after my boat

has rounded the bend;

I want you to see how,

in spite of our sorrows,

dark waters still flow.

About the Author

Alice Towey is a writer of speculative fiction and poetry based out of Northern California. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Fireside, and Deep Magic. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop. When she’s not writing, she works as a civil engineer specializing in water resources management.

This Stitch, This Time

Anna Martino

What do you mean, Why didn’t I warn them before?

Are you serious? I did!

Answer me this if you are so smart. If you had seen it, what would you have done?

It all began with a scrap of fabric I used to test the machine’s tension. Over and over and over, white cotton thread over navy blue twill, the same line of bumps and stitches. I didn’t know it was Morse code until Jean pointed it out. It went like this, let me write it down for you:

-.-. .- .-. .- / -- .. .- --..-- / - .... .. ... / -- .. ... ... .. --- -. / .. ... / .-. ..- .. -. . -.. .-.-.- / .-. ..- -. / .-- .... .. .-.. . / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -.

I just thought someone had tampered with my sewing machine. It wouldn’t be the first time—those engineers laughed at my hobby all the time, and they loved to commit elaborate pranks against my private possessions. I could take those, instead of the constant harassment I had to hear: There she goes, the little seamstress. Can you fix the crotch of my trousers? Let me just take them out . . .

I’m not happy they ended up like that, but there are days I wonder if that wasn’t poetic justice. It was their fault, too. They knew and did nothing.

But that’s another kettle of fish altogether. Back to the story: I knew Jean was having a bad time at the barracks, too. He was the youngest of the engineering set, the one sent for the most menial jobs and excluded from the fun parts—if you found the idea of sending civilians to Mars “fun.” He and I were the same under the eyes of the big guns: expendable parts, though it’s hard to find good spaceship engineers and, in my case, good space suit seamstresses. No wonder we stuck together, despite the age difference and language barrier.

He decoded the bumps my ancient sewing machine had produced. “Cara Mia, this mission is doomed. Run while you can. Who is this Mia?”

“It isn’t a name. It’s an endearment. Like ma puce or my dear.”

And I haven’t heard that one in give or take twelve years.

My grandmother was a lingerie seamstress. She knew all about elastic fabrics and about paying attention to minute details. That was why the Space Agency had picked her up when they needed help with the first space suits. Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon because a specialist in bras hand-stitched the hem of his bright white jumpsuit. And I became a space suit designer because a specialist in bras made Neil Armstrong’s suit. It’s a family tradition.

Here’s the thing, though: my grandmother never used “Cara Mia” as an endearment, more like a warning: Cara Mia, your dad won’t like that stud in your nose. Cara Mia, if you want to get out of this place, you’d better study harder or marry rich. Cara Mia, that boy is going to be the end of you.

In short, “Cara Mia” meant trouble, and I didn’t want trouble at work. That mission was my golden ticket, the dream of every specialist in the field. I gave up a lot to be here, and an old machine I brought with me for the sake of the home comforts wouldn’t ruin this.

So I oiled the moving parts; I changed the needles, the sewing feet, the sewing plate, the bobbin and the shuttle, and nothing worked. I changed the goddamned motor, but it didn’t matter what I did, no matter what I put together or put apart, the machine still stitched Cara Mia, the mission is doomed.

“Don’t bloody ‘Cara Mia’ me, grandma!” I screamed into the air-conditioned void, only to regret it. What if someone heard me? (What I actually thought: what if this apparition claiming to be my grandmother exploded my sewing machine out of spite?) “Now, why is the mission doomed? It’s dangerous, yes, but . . . You made those first space suits, didn’t you? Those men could have died on their way to the Moon. Did that stop you? Answer me, what’s the problem?”

I hit the pedal and let the shuttle fly away. Dot after dash and dash after dot it went until it ran out of fabric. When you make something bespoke, you cannot cut corners. They are cutting corners. Run while you can.

Now, see through my point of view. Why would the top brass believe me? I don’t understand about spaceship building, I’m just a woman putting scraps together to make fancy jumpsuits. They’d say I’m insane and hire someone else for the work. And I thought about Jean, of course. He didn’t deserve to die like that. No one did. Two hundred people on that blasted unit alone, and all the others I didn’t know. If they are cutting corners, were they all doomed? Could I save them?

I should have run another line of stitching. I should have asked for more. But I turned off the machine and ran away from the room.

If you were there, you’d have done the same.

Wouldn’t you?

I kept away from my machine and concentrated on the work on the space suits and uniforms. I worked in the electronic machines from the compound, those soulless pieces of crap. All smart textiles and precise measurements. Not an inch to be wasted—the work I was being handsomely paid to do without a question. The measurements came over the email and I made my magic without meeting the strangers who would colonize the Red Planet for us.

And all the while I heard the same scream at the back of my head: Cara Mia, run while you can.

Could you pretend all was normal? Was I making funeral shrouds for civilians dreaming of Mars? My old machine wouldn’t answer that, only told me to run away every time I asked it. Typical for my grandmother: screw the others, save your own skin. She survived two world wars being this self-absorbed, but this time around I couldn’t afford the same callousness. Could you afford it, even if the price was never to get to Mars?

When Jean showed up at my room again, with the haggard face of those who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, I knew things were turning for the worse.

Part of me wanted to lie, if only to save him. Tell him the machine broke down. I chose the truth instead, and this damned us all.

I never asked Jean what the French used to talk to their dead. That old-fashioned sewing machine, all seaweed green plastic and kitschy flower décor, wasn’t what I would have imagined as an instrument to talk to the dead, either. I should have told him that. “Was this your grandmother’s?”

“No, it’s my mother’s. Grandma would never own such a civilian machine.” I had to add, “There’s a difference between your professional screwdrivers and the ones I could buy at the hardware store, isn’t it? Same with me.”

“Oh, well. You live and learn.” Jean tried to laugh, but he was in knots as he turned to the machine, trembling as he spoke with deep respect. “Madame, I am sorry to disturb you, but they say the departed can see more than anyone. You have seen something I didn’t. Please advise me. Am I wrong to be worried? Do you have any counsel?” He turned to me with a serious expression. “Do I have to press the pedal or you do?”

“Dunno—it’s the first time I’m doing this. Here, sit down, let me show how it’s done . . . You should hold the fabric like this . . . Put down the foot . . . Good. Now press the pedal gently. Like you would with a car.”

If it were a car, Jean would have crashed it on the nearest wall: he pressed the pedal too fast and the machine almost jumped out of the table. Still, the message came across, and as he read it, his face went aflame. “Oh, Vera. I wish . . . Well. That’s enough information for me,” he said.

“Please tell me what happened.”

“How do I explain it? It’s like the . . . Like the lining of a coat, I think? On a good coat, the lining holds the stuffing together, yes? They are not putting the lining everywhere. I think they could get away with it. They wouldn’t risk . . . I mean . . . There’s always a risk, but . . . ” He looked at the machine again, his heart in his mouth. “Do you think we can save them? If I talk to the bosses, if I explain the situation, can we save them?”

This time, I operated the sewing machine. The phrase came by, Jean read it and ran away.

Later, I decoded the phrase by myself. They have mocked your concerns, and yet you worry about them? Let them burn, for this hell is of their own making.

The following morning, I found a top of the range electronic sewing machine at my office, substituting my old heirloom. They also informed me that Ensign Jean took a leave of absence for medical reasons. The CCTV cameras appeared on the following morning, for security reasons.

You see where this is going, right?

The new machine didn’t jump and didn’t spurt—it was as if they had gifted me a sewing robot. I tried to call my grandmother back, but either she refused to show up in such a complex machinery or . . .

Or else she abandoned me. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But I couldn’t abandon them. I couldn’t abandon Jean. So I turned to the CCTV cameras and said, loud and clear, “I want my machine back.”

And didn’t sew a single stitch of their space suits until they heard me.

They docked my payment. They called in a doctor to assess my sanity. They called in another garment specialist, who only stayed a week before the electronic machines spurted Morse coded stitches over the smart fabrics. By then, the entire compound knew what was going on—how could they not know? First Jean, then me, then the new specialist, and now the Morse code took over every piece of machinery in the place, from the humble coffee maker to the biggest computers in the room—all of them going run while you can and I demand to talk to Vera.

Two weeks later, I saw myself alone in front of the military officers.

Over the immense mahogany table that separated us, there was my old sewing machine and a bolt of black cotton fabric. Around it, all the engineers and the commanders staring at me tried their best to look nonplussed by the situation—but it was clear they were running out of time and out of patience.

You should have seen it: thirteen men, afraid of a green and white sewing machine. This comforts me now.

“You understand this meeting is confidential,” said the eldest of the commanders. A rhetorical question, if there was ever one. “Make this work.”

Ten engineers in the room, and nobody knew how to operate a sewing machine?

No, dear. They hired someone else to do it, then another person, and then another. When the results remained the same, they had to see me doing it.

I threaded the machine and ripped a piece of fabric. Grandma, I cannot leave them to die, I thought as the bobbin shook inside the shuttle and the dots and dashes showed up, white on black. Say something they will believe in.

One commander picked up the piece of fabric as soon as I finished. “It matches the other message,” he said to his companions, showing them the scrap. “The numbers are the same.”

“I cannot stop the launch because of a sewing machine spouting nonsense. First the ‘I demand to talk to Vera’ and now these silly coded numbers?”

“Silly coded numbers that match the parts that need attention. Jean had the correct information about your shortcuts.”

“They are not shortcuts, damn it! We checked everything. This is just a ridiculous, broken machine. She probably rigged it up for a lark. Didn’t you, girl? You did rig this up. You wanted to scare the engineers because they were mean to you, and you drove the poor ensign insane. Do you know that? You drove him mad.”

“Are you cutting corners?” I had to ask. I wanted to defend myself, my grandmother, maybe Jean. The machine wasn’t the problem; it had been the work that drove him mad. Dear Jean, who wanted to do the right thing: I owed him this much. If I caused his death or his madness, I owed him some rest.

“We are making the best we can with the money we have.”

“That’s not what I asked. Are you cutting corners?”

“You are dismissed,” the commander said.

“Are you cutting corners?”

“Take her away! Now!”

“Are you cutting corners? You’ll kill them all! Don’t you understand you will kill them?”

That’s what landed me here. They couldn’t explain it, so they blamed it on the witch. Best to pretend I was mad, and that I rigged the compound’s machines to spit out Morse coded voodoo.

The message Jean had read? Here, see it yourself: I kept it when they locked me up. There’s your truth, my dear, all written in white thread over the blue twill: all the places with weak points in the spaceship, the codes for the parts where they used second-class material. The same places that caused the explosion when they launched the rocket into the atmosphere.

So much for economy, huh? In the end, they were all expendable, like me. Who’d thought?

The prison ward allowed me to use their sewing machines the other day. They wanted to see if the trick would happen again, now that the spaceship exploded like I said it would. You know what I got? Here it is:

.. / ..-. --- .-. --. .. ...- . / -.-- --- ..-

Did you translate it?

It reads I forgive you.

Is it my grandmother? Jean? One astronaut wearing my space suit?

They can forgive me all they like: they are all dead, and this is a sentence I cannot unpick. What was the use of knowing the future, if the future was this cloister room and those white, burning clouds in the sky? What’s the use of knowing things if you cannot alter them?

Now, tell me what would you do. I’d like to hear it.

About the Author

Anna Martino is a Brazilian SFF writer and editor, publishing in English and Portuguese since 2013. Her work in English was featured in magazines such as Strange Horizons, Luna Station Quarterly, Abyss & Apex, and Translunar Travelers Lounge, and was also performed at BBC World Radio. She lives in São Paulo with her husband and son.

City of Eternity

Pan Haitian, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan

Strange boulders littered the Mountain of the Empty.

They were ovoid in appearance and similar in size, their corners and edges smoothed away by the wind, so that even the moonlight shining upon them found no purchase. Like ghastly white skeletons, they lay half-buried in the earth, large and small. They all seemed to be assembled in their proper places, from the chassis onward, rounded and polished, without holes, one ovoid mass jutting atop another. They resembled the spindle-form bodies of birds, the rounded contours of beasts, the big bellies of water jars . . . the list of their shapes would be endless.

Perhaps it was no more than the desolateness of the Mountain of the Empty that made you see things when you walked past those boulders. You felt as if they were shaking their heads, or nodding, or muttering unintelligible things to the wind. Nothing here was clear or certain. It was an ineffable feeling, beyond close investigation. If you stood and had a clearer look, you would see only motionless, lifeless stone.

The weather was strange. In one moment moonlight filled my lap; in another there was misty rain. I led Susu through the jumbled boulders. Newly formed rivulets ran underfoot through the crevices between stones.

A delicate rain fell from the trees like scattered blossoms, or alternatively, scattered blossoms drifted down from the heavens like a delicate rain.

A lone, powerful black horse came toward us, bearing the moonlight that suddenly flashed through a crevice in the clouds.

“Who goes there?” I shouted, gathering the remaining courage of one who had been defeated in battle. The shout carried across the broad valley, like an arrow slicing across the azure.

But the shadow astride the horse did not move. Only when the horse eventually arrived in front of us did we discover that the soldier sitting in the saddle was dead. From his appearance, he’d been dead for at least two days. His face was hidden in the shadow of the iron helmet, pitching in front of his chest with the horse’s every step. The tassels on the horse’s bit swayed in the moistened air, drifting left, then drifting right. The body inside the armor was dead, but the fine iron armor that encased it would not fall so easily. The crest on the shield indicated that he, like me, was one of the Imperial Guard.

I grasped his frigid ankle and pulled him off the horse.

As I dragged the body along, as I dug the pit, Susu remained to one side, silent. Only when I flipped the corpse over, preparing to push it into the pit, and the slanting moonlight illuminated the young man’s face, did Susu at last speak. “O fallen one, why have you appeared here? Did you travel so far for no purpose but to die in this foreign land? Did you come here only to inform us of the inevitability of fate and the imperishability of death? Now you will become the wind in the woods, the grass that nourishes the earth. You will become part of this world, and the commotions upon it will have nothing more to do with you—if this is the fate of all of us, o, I fervently hope for the courage to face it with equanimity.”

I pushed earth atop that face like dead ash. In my heart, I said, “O fallen one, you could not escape the clutches of the enemy, but you have brought us a mount. If we escape alive, I’ll thank you properly. But what gift of thanks do you need? No longer need you concern yourself with the arrow that comes from behind. Your body may soon stink and crawl with bugs, but no longer need you fear any disturbance. O fallen one, you may have died tranquilly, but I still must continue my seeking. The road is long ahead of me; I can’t squander my brief allotted time. I still have courage enough to seek glory, to take victory on the battlefield, and to offer my won honors at the feet of beautiful women—no matter what fate you came to, it cannot change me.”

The trees in the woods were all very tall, their branches hidden in the black of the night sky, so that the flowers seemed to fall from the heavens themselves. They were in two colors, a pale red and an ashen blue.

Susu reached out her hand and caught a blossom. Her profile, fixated on the flower, had been chilled livid in the rain. Those long black lashes of hers lay atop her colorless cheek. I could hear her supple breathing.

Her fearsome king father had died. Her beautiful kingdom had fallen. Her loyal people had all turned traitor. But her face remained ever beautiful.

For this woman’s beauty alone, the Iron-Boned Khan had sent a hundred thousand soldiers. We were already far from Wolf Pass, far from the limits of his power, but as long as Susu lived and exhaled those breaths that stirred the stamens of the flower, the pursuers sent by the Iron-Boned Khan would not spare this last survivor of a fallen subject kingdom.

I wouldn’t let her fall into the hands of the Iron-Boned Khan. I wanted to find a way for her to remain forever safe, a way for me to remain forever by her side. I loved her so. The love was like a smoldering flame, slowly consuming my heart and flesh. The love was the feel of her light touch at my elbow when she was hungry. The love was watching her curl up wearily upon the damp fallen leaves. The love was waiting outside the woods, listening to the pattering of urine that came from within.

I suppressed the love like a tempest in my heart, wordlessly helping her atop the horse, and only looked enviously upon the petals crushed beneath her thighs.

Amid fine raindrops, we continued forward, and saw the Undying Sages of legend.

They appeared suddenly in the forest clearing. At first, we could make out only murky silhouettes.

Susu clutched tightly to my tattered armor, gazing upon them with fearful reverence.

“General Meng, is this where the Undying Sages live? They look so dirty and wretched. Can they truly help us escape the death that hounds our heels?”

They were motionless. Admittedly, they didn’t look like scholars full of wisdom. Photinia and lichen grew from their rotting garments. Wild azalea bloomed from their knees. Their skin was covered in dark moss, their eyelids with white bird excrement. Their feet seemed to have sunk deep into the mud and taken root.

Two of them seemed to be playing weiqi under a pine tree, only the board had become smothered in mushrooms and vines, concealing the position of the pieces. Regardless, they remained deep in consideration, heads lowered. Another Sage seemed to be playing a zither upon his crossed legs, only we couldn’t discern any tune. In fact, when we’d stepped into this clearing, we’d heard the single metallic note of a plucked string. The sound had crossed the dim space under the trees, like an undulating wave line, before striking a crooked tree, and splitting in two, to drift off in opposite directions. We waited for a long time but didn’t hear a second note from the zither. Only when the first sound reached the ends of the earth, perhaps, would a second sound set off sedately to catch up with it.

These people were in fact alive, but their movements were slow beyond endurance.

I found it difficult to comprehend. Their sagacity was such that they could fly into the heavens, to tranquilly converse with the stars, to set their lives abloom upon the Nine Provinces’ long river of History like the most resplendent fireworks, and yet they did no more than allow themselves to be rained upon like dilapidated stone statues.

I walked all the way from the east side to the west end, shouting language that grew increasingly crude with urgency, but none of them paid mind to me.

I realized that my movements were perhaps too quick for them, like a phantom that passed in the blink of an eye.

It could drive you to despair. We’d endured hardship after hardship to come here, but we had no way to communicate with them. They wouldn’t even look at us.

Fortunately, before abandoning my efforts, I took Susu’s horse and walked deeper into the woods for a while.

I found other silent ones. They were scattered throughout the woods, slowly turning their bodies as if in dance. Their heads were woodenly upraised; their eyes were open but seemed to see nothing. Yet compared to the earlier Sages, their movements were at least more fluid, more nimble. I could even see a grizzle-bearded elder among them, swiveling his eyes toward me.

I spoke: “What are the lot of you doing?”

His brow furrowed, as if he’d heard the ear-splitting cry of a bird.

I had no choice but to slow down and ask again, “What—are—the—lot—of—you—doing?”

“We’re observing the great and small of all things, including the gods Primordium and Ruin.”

“But you’re only sitting here unmoving. How is that possible?”

He wrinkled a face with skin layered like a mummy’s. Dismissively, he said, “With our powers, towering Gouge Mountain can be encompassed in a single speck of dust, and the dust would not be affected in the slightest. The vastness of the four seas can be set inside a humble heart, and the heart would not grow or shrink. Look, that man in gray there has lifted his neck to swallow that viscous cloud. He is not swallowing a cloud; he is swallowing all of Ning Province—see that old man whose beard trails on the ground? He is swallowing the Boundless Sea.”

I was shocked. “I don’t doubt your powers. It’s precisely because of them that we’ve come to you for aid. Please tell us, how might we survive?”

But his eyes had already turned elsewhere. He only lifted a finger so thin it was no more than bone and pointed at a white stone in the clearing. “Look . . . ”

The rain had stopped by then; the wind skipped under the tree leaves, blowing droplets loose. The moonlight was growing bright, shining through the trees to illuminate the clearing. But I didn’t see anything.

Susu was still gazing intently at the clearing, but my neck was growing stiff. Impatiently, I asked again, “What are we looking at?”

The Undying Sage gave a long sigh. “If you cannot focus your concentration to a single point, how can you comprehend the answer? Life arises from stillness. Only by settling into complete stillness can one sense the breath and rhythm of heaven and earth. You must make yourself part of it, become one with the sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers. Then you will understand the truth of Primordium and Ruin.”

Susu was a girl who could endure loneliness. She gazed fixedly at the stone, seeming as if she’d glimpsed something but could not be sure. Meanwhile my feet grew numb, my eyelids ached, and coldness seeped upward from beneath my feet.

I couldn’t help but ask again, “Those people we saw first—why weren’t they moving?”

That Undying Sage seemed to be watching the tip of his nose. It was a long, long time before a hollow voice drifted out from beneath the tangled beard: “They have reached the highest state out of all of us. They simply don’t need to move, don’t need to breathe, don’t need to eat or drink. To them, exercise is meaningless. They are Primordium and Ruin themselves.”

Susu asked too, “Then why can you speak with us? Is your cultivation insufficient?”

The Sage became a little angry. He said, “Every month, one of us remains alert for the purpose of guiding you lost mortals. You were fortunate to encounter me immediately upon your arrival.”

Susu tugged at the corner of my clothes. She said softly, “I’m hungry.”

I too felt profound exhaustion. My belly rumbled like thunder. “I apologize, we’re too weary to reach your level of comprehension anytime soon. Can you spare us some food?”

“Food?” The old man smiled and faintly waved his hand. “There are only two foods here. One is the Fruit of Knowledge. The other is the Flower of Life. Eat the Fruit of Knowledge, and your eyes will open to understand everything in the mortal world. Eat the Flower of Life, and you will join us as one of the Undying.”

Undying! Who could have thought it would be so simple to gain the highest knowledge in the Nine Provinces. This temptation came too sudden and too great to resist. Was this not the answer we sought? So I thought.

He turned over his left hand, revealing two ash-blue flowers. They were none other than the flowers that had fallen on our shoulders and arms during the entirety of the journey. We looked closely and saw that minute fruits were concealed under the petals. These were the Fruits of Knowledge.

Susu’s face reflected, mirrorlike, the paleness of my own. But she unhesitatingly reached out a hand, took an ash-blue fruit, and swallowed it down in one gulp. I hurriedly took the other fruit and swallowed it.

Again, the clear note of a plucked zither reverberated through the woods.

Time appeared to pause. Dew rolled down from the treetops and seemed to linger at length in the air before falling to the grass.

“Careful, don’t get too close.” The old man spoke in a voice that contained both contentment and the pleasure of revealing a secret. “They’re right under your feet.”

The world had suddenly grown fine-grained. I saw all the details that had, though they’d existed before now, never been seen by any.

I’d gazed countless times upon Susu’s face; nothing could be more familiar to me. But in this instant, it appeared in front of me with a clarity I’d never experienced. So many details revealed themselves that it seemed an unfamiliar mask.

I saw the fine white hairs on the girl’s face like a fall-frosted field of artemisia. In her eyes were translucent pupils filled with amazement and cone cells and lenses. The lines at the corners of her mouth rippled lightly with surprise and joy. Her face was so alive, full of expressions that we’d never noticed before. Who said that she was a princess as cold as eternal ice? I looked at her for a long time, before following her gaze downward.

I saw clearly the city of the sand-people.

They were on the stone at my feet, their movements rapid as they constructed tiny buildings, houses with pointed roofs and beautiful courtyards that were likely smaller than a speck of dust. They were built, taken apart, and built again, each time bigger and more imposing and more beautiful than the last time.

These people were smaller than the smallest speck of dust, and their lives were similarly short, spanning not even the tick of a clock. But they bustled without rest. Fields and vineyards expanded outward bit by bit. Thin roads spread and canals crossed. The houses and buildings were like tiny chessboards. They raised enormous palaces and gardens and high towers like the point of a pin. They built grand bridges over the remnants of dewdrops. They rode on sand-horses, doing battle with mites, bravely slaying them. There were countless tiny flashes of blades concentrated about black banners—yes, these were their troops and soldiers. They had their own duty and glory.

Other sand-people continued to build ceaselessly, before quickly dying. But their descendants flooded out steadily from the houses and cities, more than there were before.

Sometimes their expansions failed. Every drop of dew was a terrible flood. The leap of a squirrel a hundred paces away would make for a terrible earthquake. Even the excessive brightness of the moonlight brought drought. But they were not discouraged, and endured through it all.

In only a minuscule span of time, they’d raised a tiny but incomparably magnificent city. It was a city on a grander scope than I’d ever seen. Fine wisps of smoke rose from it under the moonlight; it held millions of sand-people. The prosperity and flourishing was more than a single glance could take in.

And the sand-people did more than just work; they remembered to enjoy the pleasures of life. They decorated their courtyards with gorgeous molds and mosses of every hue, colors changing with every second, a hundred times more dazzling than the gardens of our normal dimension.

They also had markets, overlaid with the most variegated of colors, the most magnificent of wares. The goods flowed like a parti-colored riverlet. Many merchants from other cities came to participate in their markets; sailboats filled the harbor—the big-bellied cargo ships could fly through the air, like tiny specks of floating dust, borrowing buoyancy from moonlight to rise and descend, coming and going freely.

The sand-people gathered under the moon, dancing around the faint, flickering light of embers. If you bent down carefully, you could even hear the merry tunes, smell the overpowering fragrance of flowers and wine, see those beautiful women, and the love that was irrepressible under the moonlight.

The more we looked, the more we grew entranced, practically melding into them and becoming one of the gathering. But perhaps this caused our faces to press too close. Agitation rippled through the sand-people. They looked with alarm upon the giant faces that had suddenly appeared in the sky.

Susu’s face was so gentle and beautiful that they took it for the manifestation of a god. They overcame their initial panic and began to sculpt a statue in her image. They built tall walls around the statue, raising a temple. They constructed an enormous palace to pay her homage.

I was drawn by their passion. I bent down farther, wanting to see whether their god’s statue was more beautiful than Susu in the flesh, but my crude breathing, to the sand-people, was the most terrible of storms. It swept over the city, knocking over those walls the width of a hair, collapsing the palaces, bringing down the towers.

Countless sand-people died in the calamity. Discovering my error, I hastily shrank back and hid my face.

The sand-people looked at what remained of their city after the disaster and grieved but very soon they put it behind them. They were quick to forget. The city was restored unflaggingly, even greater and more beautiful than before.

They rebuilt the temple and palace. Beside Susu’s statue, they erected another ferocious, dreadful statue. From above, I recognized my own image.

They’d taken me for a god of evil—I wasn’t very pleased, but soon, at least, we could once again appreciate their songs and endless revelry under the moonlight.

I’d assumed that this city would remain vibrant forever. But then, without rhyme or reason, like a great tree suddenly running to the end of its allotted life span, the fountains dried, the flowers and molds in the gardens wilted, the sand-people were no longer replenished when they died, and their numbers dwindled. No god could save them.

When even we could see that the vitality of the city was gradually draining away, they seemed to come to a collective decision. At once, all the cargo ships moored to the docks departed the city. Tens of thousands of specks of dust danced in the moonlight. All the sand-people had left, never to return.

All that remained on the stone was the empty city and those countless exquisite little houses. We sighed softly, an emptiness in our hearts. Like children unwilling to part with beloved toys, we stubbornly waited for the sand-people to return—though it seemed that no more time passed than it took to flick a finger. First the smaller houses, likely built of inferior materials, began to collapse like shifting sand. And in the next such interval, the better-constructed houses fell one after the other.

The city’s drainage system grew clogged. The gathered dew rapidly swelled and washed away the earth, transforming the broad boulevards and walkways into ravines. At least thirty or forty rivers rushed into the city; swarms of mites roamed what had once been the most splendid song-houses and palaces. The grandest of the palaces disappeared in a great fire; a firefly had chanced to alight, and the tiny spark from its foot had set ablaze the many-colored garden.

The grand bridge took relatively long to fall, followed by the dam. They’d endured for an impressive time over the dried remnants of dewdrops, but the shock of a minute movement of my foot reduced them, too, to dust.

The storehouses and cellars lasted even longer, but all the same, they collapsed within the time it would take half a stick of incense to burn, returning to the fine dust from which they’d come.

We refused to give up. Wordlessly, we waited. Look, that black speck. Were they returning?

No, it was only an ant hurrying through. This lost insect was like a terrible monster, striding over ten neighborhoods with one step. It dragged a grass seed behind itself, which demolished everywhere it had been like an avalanche.

Perhaps there were other sand-people who could return and restore the city that recorded the dreams and triumphs of their countless generations, just like they’d rescued the city from the storm we’d breathed out.

But at that moment, my nose tingled. The itch was like a needle, uncontrollable, sinking bit by bit into my nasal cavity. A tempest gathered in my lungs, and ultimately rushed out of my throat in an enormous sneeze. The entire city flew into the air.

A sound rang out.

Everything disappeared. Gone.

The stone, under the moonlight, was a field of desolate white.

Susu and I awoke as if from a dream. I’d thought a thousand years had passed. Yet I discovered that the third note had just left the fingertip of the man under the tree, rising on a wavering diagonal into the air.

Under the moonlight, the old man’s face was like decayed wood. Expressionless, he opened his right hand, revealing, again, two flowers, only those flowers were pale red.

Susu picked up a flower. She turned and gave me a dazzling smile. “General Meng, will you come with me?”

The old mercenary paused in his story, gazing dully toward the others.

“I often think,” he sighed quietly, “of the courage of women . . . Susu ate the entire flower and became a boulder on the Mountain of the Empty. And I suppose in front of her I became a wisp of smoke . . . disappearing without a trace.

“I knew that in the outside world there were many vigorous, ardent deeds to be done, many beautiful young supple-limbed women waiting, many rich, fragrant, throat-tearing wines fermenting. But to Susu, turned to stone, in the time I was experiencing all this, her heart wouldn’t have given half a leap.

“I escaped back to the outside world and continued living my red-hot days. I fought and killed for my life, experienced the new wonders that every day brought me, acting always according to instinct. I cast down gold like dirt—a fortune won today, I could spend by the next. High titles and salaries came and went. Painted beauties were only sweets on the table. I knew my ultimate end was to return to the Mountain of the Empty and become a piece of wizened stone.

“Fifty years have passed in the blink of an eye. My body has accumulated hundreds of scars. Whether in Lan Province or Wan Province, I earned much renown for myself, though my hands were empty, and I had nothing. I told myself, it’s just about enough. If I continue my games, I’ll be tossing my bones to the mountains and rivers.

“So I went back to look for the road to the Mountain of the Empty, year after year. By now I’m so old I’m nearly dead, but I still haven’t found the road back.

“I’m a real fool,” he said self-pityingly. “What made me think I had the luck to encounter eternity for a second time? If I’d eaten that flower . . . ” He began to chuckle. Suddenly he drew a big circle in the air with his hands. “Heh, all this will become illusion, as if pulled in by the rapids of the river of time to disappear at its other end. But I can go back to find that girl. Every thousand years, we can touch. Every ten thousand years, we can enjoy the fount of love . . . I can live forever . . . ” His voice grew fainter and fainter; the others by the fire couldn’t hear his continued muttered complaints. The wind rose. They seemed to hear a faint, merry tune from somewhere nearby, smell the powerful fragrance of flowers and wine. They saw those beautiful women, and the love that was irrepressible under the moonlight. Had all this—ever truly existed?

Originally published in Chinese in Fantasy 1+1, September 2006.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

Pan Haitian is a graduate of School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, National Class I Registered Architect, and a science fiction and fantasy writer. He has won five Galaxy Awards of Chinese SF. His story “The Legend of Yanshi” was adapted into the ballet drama “Yanshi” by the National Ballet of China. He is also the co-founder of Jiuzhou Novoland, a fantastic ancient Chinese setting crowd worldbuilding project. He worked as editor-in-chief of Odyssey of China Fantasy from 2005-2010, and now works mainly as a screen writer.

The Language Birds Speak

Rebecca Campbell

Alex cantilevered from her hip, his neck arched, knees and elbows braced against her gut. Gracie widened her stance so they wouldn’t pitch forward onto the kitchen floor while he screeched, an emphatic, full-bodied “NO” that felt like the crunch of a car accident one block over. Except he didn’t really say “NO,” it was instead this—noise—not a word, but a howl.

It had started when he turned two, just when she was waiting for a sudden explosion of words. He made the sound when she took his boots off, carried him in the front door, gave him cocoa, denied him the iPad, allowed him the iPad, but not the cartoon he wanted. She’d given up on talking through it: you can’t run out into the street, you have to hold my hand, you can’t stay at the park forever. Instead, she held him and waited as he vibrated in defiance. She vibrated in sympathy.

In her arms he changed from cat to cannonball, grinding into her hip bone. Then fish, sliding over her arms and hands, then he was a pinching crab. Clinging to him, exhausted, she made a sound like a croon or a sleepy purr.

It stopped them both. He changed again, now warm and still. He whispered the first new word in months: “[ ].”

And he curled into her arms, his head resting on her shoulder, an egg cuddled into her chest. Looking down at him, she wondered that he was the same boy who’d shape-shifted from spike to stone to crab, and now fit perfectly into her arms. It was hard to believe he had ever been hard to hold.

“You’re an egg,” she said. “My little egg.”

But he had fallen asleep between one word and another. She was left doubting what she had heard anything like “[ ],” which was a word both unfamiliar and true. It might be an exhausted mother hoping for meaning in the noise. Nevertheless she muttered it, testing the sound: “[ ]. [ ].”

Munira sat across the desk, a manila folder open in front of her.

“Tell me why you came in.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“What did you first notice?”

“He has trouble.” Munira’s easy hands and professional watchfulness made Gracie at once comfortable and guarded, her shoulders rising toward her ears. Alex wasn’t the only person being evaluated, she guessed. “Trouble talking. I say. I say use your words. But he doesn’t.”

Alex refused to roll the ball toward the child, who asked nicely, “would you like to share?” Sunny curls and a red playsuit. Her mother standing back, glancing down at her phone.

“No,” with such force the little girl took a step back. Then she stepped forward again, her bottom lip pushed out in reproach.

“You’re not very good at sharing,” she said. Each syllable clear, the voice of a good kindergarten teacher, a beloved but strict grandparent.

Then she reached for the ball.

“It’s her ball, Alex,” Gracie said. “Let her—”

—He scooped it up then. “It’s hers,” she repeated, trying to cover the space between them.

When he made the sound, he was still crouching, but now the girl crunched on her back in the gravel, and Gracie couldn’t tell how it had happened.

“Alex!” Her own strangled shout. “Alex!”

Then the mother was there as well, the little girl bawling while Gracie picked Alex up and kicked the ball over to mother and daughter, locked in their own moment together. Alex wailed into her shoulder. A feeling like gravel in her chest.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said.

The other mother laughed uncomfortably, rocking the little girl back and forth on her hip. “Kids. Won’t be the last time.” She glanced at Alex, burrowing. The little girl wiped her eyes. The woman set her down, and she ran back to the slide, ignoring Alex. “He seems upset—”

“Yeah I think he—” silence, then, “He’s tired. We should—”

She shrugged and walked homeward, Alex still clinging. He whispered in her ear. “[ ].”

It was not just what the sound meant—his disorientation and pain, his discomfort, his sadness—but the physical effects of the sound that stopped her, rough against her brain, overrunning her nerves with broken fingernails. His voice caught on her in a way she had never before experienced. Motherhood, she imagined. This must be that maternal connection they always talk about. Was it supposed to be so complicated?

Mal didn’t have the same trouble. He’d say, dadly, “come on kid, not in my ear” when Alex climbed up his back and sat on his shoulders, shrieking with laughter.

“Does he point?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good. That’s important.”

“But. Is that enough? You worry.”

“Why is that?” Munira’s voice inviting, her hands open, her shoulders low. The familiar and clinically friendly posture of therapists and psychologists.

“Because the world is full of awful things? And kids who can’t talk—”

A playground full of children. One little girl with a high-pitched shriek that drove Gracie through the trees to a chain-link fence that adjoined a farm where she could examine the grass, the birds with the focused attention of a child trying not to be seen. Sometimes the other kids left her alone. Sometimes they didn’t. She imagined Alex a few years from now, going off to first grade, and—

“It’s. He’s. Delayed.”

“Maybe. But delays don’t have to be catastrophic. We know a lot about expressive language acquisition. And we’re going to figure out what Alex needs.”

He was out there, right now, with the speech pathologist, little boy in a little room, the brittle cheerfulness of institutional toys. Animal decals on the walls, squirrels, and elephants two-by-two through the Garden of Eden. She had watched him through the window, one small hand reaching toward the toys. It hurt her heart to think this was just the beginning.

“So how many words does he use regularly?”

“Oh. One. Two—” she counted on her fingers. “He says Mommy and Daddy. Alex. It’s okay. Juice. No. Maybe seven? Do foreign words count? Or made up?”

Munira stopped. “Made up?”

“I mean. Everything’s an arbitrary sign blah blah blah. But we also say things like [ ] or [ ]. We say those a lot.”

For the first time in their meeting, Munira looked surprised, and Gracie saw the mind behind her professional demeanor: curious, pleased. She asked quickly, “What language is that?”

“I don’t know. I heard it when I was a kid. My grandma was—it’s probably highland something. Gaelic.”

“That doesn’t sound like—what was that again?”

“[ ],” she said, and felt the blush of firelight on her skin. She wished Alex was in her arms to share it, so they could imagine together the way a room heated by a woodstove felt when you opened the door on a wet evening, heat emanating from the stony mass of the chimney. The sweet smell of wood burning, its music.

Munira sounded it out. “Grckqhsh?” Hearing it put wrong startled Gracie out of her reverie.

“No. [ ]. It’s probably an obscure Norse word.”

“Krrrrichs? Cchchhkssj?” She laughed. “I’ve never heard anything like that. It’s the oddest sound, usually you can recognize language patterns, and I studied Old Icelandic—could I record that? Or maybe the first word you said.”

Gracie hesitated. “If you—”

Munira pulled out her phone. “Could you say that twice? With a pause in between?”

“[ ],” Gracie said, “[ ].”

“And what does it mean?”

“It’s hard to. It means kind of longing. Separation, maybe? Loneliness. I say it when I’m telling him goodbye. Saudade. Sehnsucht.”

“Yes. That’s what I guessed, maybe it shares a root with—anyway. You don’t often hear something genuinely new. I’m going to send that to a friend who can probably tell you what dialect your Grandma was speaking.” Here Munira smiled, unprofessionally delighted. “But, Alex. So you’ve been teaching him these words? And he’s comfortable using them?”

“I guess. They come up.”

“So we’ll call it a vocabulary of ten words.” After a bright moment of confusion and joy, the institutional calm had reasserted itself. It was both lonely and comforting, a necessary loss.

“Just give me a moment and then we’ll talk to Mikkel about the evaluation.”

Gracie waited in the still, beige room, admiring the medical diagrams of the larynx, of Broca’s area, the infant development charts on the acquisition of language, the drawings by children—Munira’s kids?—of flowers and crooked unicorns. She remembered this morning, when Alex said “[ ].” Not “apple” like the logo on the back of a computer, but cool skin against the palm of her hand as she stopped on her way to the bus stop, late September morning soaked through with dew. She pulled it from the tree and polished it shiny before she bit into it. That was [ ].

Eating his breakfast apples, Alex bit. Smiled. Bit again. Then looked up and said, “[ ].”

In that moment nothing was wrong with either of them. But then he tried his tongue at English, and it was different: words sounded once, never to be repeated. Maybe none of them were words, just accidents that she, in her hopefulness, had named. Which was why they were here, to be evaluated, and start spending long afternoons in beige playrooms, with plastic toys a million other children had mouthed.

She was in the waiting room when Munira rejoined her.

“Take this card,” she handed Gracie a rectangle of thin gray plastic. “They’re offering some new resources and techniques. It might be useful.”

“Are they part of the ministry?”

“No—NGO. But doing excellent work. You should call.”

Gracie thought of classrooms and living rooms where, as a child, she had sat in terrified silence, fearing the sounds that came out when she tried to speak. None of that would happen to Alex.

She’d been bent over a smartphone, absorbed, her face unresponsive. He’d been six months old, dozing in her lap, and seen that blank nightmare mask of a mother. Her disregard had permanently scarred him. The core trauma of his life already underway and unstoppable: parents so busy with their work and themselves that he, little visitor, found himself too often alone, a social animal in unnatural isolation, like an orca in a tank at Sea World. Or a rhesus monkey snatched from his mother and consigned to the stainless-steel pit of despair, surrounded by nothing but the distortions of that mirror, the reverberating cries of his isolation. For science.

“That’s ridiculous,” Malcolm whispered when he lay with Alex asleep in the crook of his arm. “I mean, I get the feeling, because we all suck as parents. But kids develop at their own pace.”

Alex had been fretful all day, refusing naps, refusing all food but apples and ice cream. He had finally fallen asleep, his hands curled around Mal’s sleeve. They were too tired to move.

“But it’s so many things. How he is. You know. With kids.”

Mal snuggled Alex closer to his chest. Alex turned over and burrowed his head farther into his father’s armpit. “He’s healthy. He’s our little guy. Don’t worry so much.”

She rested her head on Mal’s chest, hearing his heartbeat and Alex’s sleeping breath. Closing her eyes, she felt the slow nighttime cadence of their family, drifting into stillness, while outside the last light faded, and the crescent moon rose—leaving a smudge on the water of a black inlet that filled the darkness behind her eyelids.

“[ ].” she said.

“What?” Mal asked, rousing, the room lit by his phone. “What did you say?”

“[ ].” she repeated, and then she was asleep again, standing on the moonlit edge of that dark inlet.

“Hi. It’s Munira. I’m wondering if you followed up on that study I told you about. I’ve been talking to the primary investigator, and I really think Alex is a good candidate. I’m going to email you the info on the card.”

Sometimes when he was asleep, sprawled in his little-boy exhaustion, she thought she saw the man he would one day be. She loved that man, too, as she loved all the varieties of Alex from infancy to the distant years after her own death.

The gray plastic card was still in her purse, where she had kept it carefully. She practiced. “Hello, Hello, Hello. My name. Is Grace.”

The more she spoke, the more awkward the words were in her mouth. “Hello. Hello. My name is Grace. Grace Feradach. Grace. F. E. R. A. D. A. C. H. Grace. Hello. My son Alexander.” Her hand shook on the phone, “my name is. Gr—” she began again. “Name—”

“Alexander,” she said carefully, “yes I’ll hold yes I’ll hold yesillhold” and felt the consonants and vowels sliding, stranger with each repetition, until they were a morass of clicks and whistles. Yesillholdalexandergracehellohellohello. Feradach. Feradach.

She had to be careful not to over-rehearse, or the words came back to her like echoes, bouncing out of her mouth when she didn’t mean it. Once, freshly dumped at twenty, she had walked home drunk from his house saying I hate you I hate you I hate youihateyouihateyouihate, first under her breath, then slowly—she realized midway through the walk—out loud to the blackened streets. Three a.m. in the kitchen, her roommate came home too, and she’d meant to say how was your night mine sucked dead bears, but what had come out was I hate you.

Steph had burst into tears. It had taken her weeks of apologies to fix it, and things had always been a little weird after that.

She stopped practicing, in case yesillhold came out of her mouth when she meant to ask Mal if he wanted last night’s leftovers for lunch.

She breathed the way she had been taught, from her belly, and dialed the number, listening to the chime at the other end and the posh woman’s voice announcing that she should wait for all options before she made her choice. A voice like polished concrete in a gray-glass office.

“Hello,” the gray concrete woman said. “You’ve reached the Genesis Project. Please enter your seven-digit code.”

“My name is—” then she stopped, flipped over the card, and saw the tiny numbers on the other side.

This time a man’s voice, warm and low.

“Hi, Tom Pryce. How can I help you?”

“Hi. Hello. Hi. My name is Gracie, and someone gave me your card about a. About a. A.” Here she floundered, as she always did when speaking to new people.

Tom seemed to realize, and carried on in that warm, slow voice. “You’re interested in the program, aren’t you? Did Munira tell you about us?”

“Yes.”

“She’s brilliant. Excellent clinician and we’re lucky she’s part of outreach.” He said it easily, like she hadn’t babbled. Like he understood. “Okay, so this is for your son?”

She paused, then meant to say, my son, but what came out was “[ ],” which Alex said pointing to his chest, and which she repeated often because it made him laugh and pat his chest. She hadn’t said it for months. It encouraged him.

She covered her mouth, like she could snatch the sounds back. But the silence was brief, and Tom carried on, as though he had not noticed her gibberish. “Great! We work with a lot of kids with expressive language issues.”

“Okay. K.”

“I’m going to text you a link to the app, okay? It’s still in beta, but it’ll give you an idea of what we do. And you can use it to set up an appointment if you’re interested. You’ll need the number on your card to register.”

“K. I. K.” She wanted to laugh—no talking to anyone if she didn’t want to, just an app. No stumbling over her words, no embarrassed blush when she misspoke.

Tom was as his voice sounded: intelligent, warm, around her own age.

“We’re definitely seeing a few points of concern. Cognitively he’s great. Fine and gross motor skills are excellent, weight, height, all that—he’s aggressively healthy, this little guy—but you’ve already seen his issues with expressive language. Is there a family history of language delays?”

“Not on Mal’s side. My father stuttered.”

“Okay.” He probably knew the minute she opened her mouth. Most people did—she put them off. She never knew when to start talking, when to stop, and she had to think so carefully about when to make eye contact and when to break it. You couldn’t stare too long, but if you didn’t look at them, people shifted uncomfortably. The more she thought about it, the stranger her performance grew.

“I wasn’t ever diagnosed.” she began. “I’ve been through a bunch of. You know. Sensory stuff. Anxiety. No diagnosis. But I always wondered if.”

She wanted to explain that the words in her head worked. She understood words on the page, too, even if she preferred other media: colors, for example, were far easier to understand and manipulate. Numbers, too, and diagrams. But when it really mattered, her voice went wrong, an empty and hollow thing that honked and whispered, words emptied of meaning as she rehearsed them hellohowareyouihateyouitsokay. She tensed for the usual response: he’d jump in, offer a word, finish her sentence. He did neither.

“As a kid. They took me out of the regular system one year, but I wasn’t held back or anything. Sometimes the wrong word, you know, to my mouth. I’d think. I want an apple, but what came out wasn’t apple. It was.” She waved her hand.

“So when you talk to Alex . . . ?”

“I’m so careful when I talk to him. To say things good. Right. Correct, you know. I say it all. Good. I talk.” She tried to find the words, but they slid away from her, and inverted themselves, and she could not make her tongue shape them—“It’s okay.”

She discovered over the course of that first week that Tom liked to talk. He talked right through her awkward silences, answering questions she couldn’t form, like he could see the direction her mind had leaped in as she listened.

“We’ve experimented with other methods, and we’re still looking for a way to record the total acquisition of language. Our goal isn’t just to understand how language functions on a practical level, but what it is. It started, oh, twenty years ago, at U of T—have you ever heard of Dr. Harlow? Worked on AI and linguistics and neurology. Do you want another cup of coffee? Because you just have to ask and—no, I’m happy if you’re happy. Anyway. Carnegie and his wife had a baby just when he needed to do a NSERC application. We funded him, too, so he could basically wire his kid. They set up cameras in all the public rooms in their house, and the kid’s bedroom, and recorded his entire life, audio, and video. The expensive part wasn’t the actual equipment—that’s a one-time purchase—it was managing the data. And that’s where we came in—we helped design software that could organize and search these recordings. Some poor bastard grad students were in charge of uploading all the data. We fed the software everything we could find on language acquisition, so it could identify patterns in the recordings. Harlow basically made a career out of watching his kid learn to speak. Now he does TED Talks. And we’re still using the software and the archive he built.”

The kid must be at least twenty by now. Did he know at the time he helped uncover the very core of human nature?

“It’s a massive archive, not just Harlow’s kid, but everything we had in our collections, and all the other research going on in language acquisition. And we’ve learned some pretty interesting things that let us help kids who are struggling.”

Was he embarrassed by these videos? Did he make snarky comments at family dinners, pass the potatoes, would you like to capture my cognitive-linguistic development, Dad?

“Especially now, since the original software has also evolved, and we’re using some current developments in machine learning. It sees things we don’t—patterns, correlations. And the more kids involved, the more sophisticated the analysis.”

“You’re. Watching?”

“I understand your concern—I do! But it’s anonymized. And we give back as much as we receive. Kids come out of here talking, Gracie. We’ve had a hand in creating some serious little chatterboxes.”

She wanted to tell him how bright Alex was, how perceptive, how gentle with cats he met on the sidewalk, how he imitated the cries of gulls when he was a baby, and how the crows seemed to speak back to him from the branches overhead. She wanted to say all that, but she felt a deep, queasy panic that made no sense.

“We’re not,” Tom began, as though he read her mind, “going to surveil Alex’s whole life. That’s not what we want. We’ve benefited from so many kids like Alex, it’s part of our mandate to give back to the community. These little guys are the real heroes. With a little help we can rescue them.”

She nodded.

“So, we’ll offer Alex a place in our eight-week program. We can revisit at the end and talk about the second phase.”

She felt herself standing then, his hand was on her shoulder, walking her toward the door.

“We’re going to need blood samples from Alex, and you, and Mal. I’ll get you the releases. You can read over them at your leisure. And don’t worry—your genomes don’t end up on any government database or anything. It’s all just ours.”

“But. Just.” He stopped and waited for her to continue, which surprised her. “Where does the money come from?”

“Oh.” Tom laughed. “Telecoms, mostly. The Org owns a couple of very useful but boring patents.”

Then they were at the door to the yellow room, and she could see Alex through the window, at play in the sunny window with a beautiful young woman sitting cross-legged beside him. He threw back his head and laughed and handed her a toy. When she opened the door, he scrambled over to her and seemed to fly up and into her arms.

“What? No.”

“But early intervention in language acquisition is vital, and every delay costs his social, emotional, and cognitive development.”

“Why do they even need my DNA?”

“This is a huge longitudinal study, one of the first of its kind combining genetic and social and educational and economic factors. All of them cross-referenced over a population of tens of thousands. They have an AI. Or. Something.”

“You sound like a press release.”

She blushed. Everything she’d just said she’d read in the app and memorized. But then she thought of Alex at the park, shoving the little girl. She began again: “Mal. He needs—”

“—I wouldn’t even do the test Mom sent us at Christmas. And how much did she hassle me about that? I don’t trust DNA collection.”

He couldn’t. Not when there was a chance to get Alex real help. Without thinking she stood up, her fingers tied up in fists. Mal was at the sink still, fiddling with one of the plants on the windowsill. “Do these need water?” he asked.

“No,” it wasn’t a shout, but some quality in her voice had intensified. “[ ].”

He stopped. Startled into attention.

She felt the command in her voice, and she was afraid. She had never seen him look that way before, his eyes wide, receptive. Her stance belligerent, shoulders tight, jaw clenched.

Then the moment passed, and he relaxed, spoke as though she had not interrupted their conversation, “I just don’t want Alex’s grandkid turned down for a job because my DNA is in a bank somewhere and it says he’s an INTJ and a cancer risk and a bad fit for the company.”

“That’s not—they won’t use it like that.”

Mal laughed. She liked his laugh. He touched her hand.

“There are other ways to help him that don’t, you know, fundamentally compromise my privacy.”

Tom shook his head. “The thing is, we need the data. It’s out of my hands.”

“You have mine. And Alex’s.”

Delicately, and with total attention, Alex picked up a block on the floor of the yellow room.

“We need a complete archive. I’m really sorry. I was hoping we could help you. Dr. Peterson is the speech therapist—a really excellent researcher—and she was looking at Alex’s file. Making a plan, you know.”

“Is there,” she heard herself ask, “anything else I can do?”

“[ ],” Alex said, not looking at her. The sound he made for reassurance. The sound he would’ve made, she always thought, if they were out hunting and gathering and she had left him in a nest of grass while she picked apples or dug clams. The sound they would have sung to one another, that meant only “here I am” and “I am here, too!”

“[ ].” she answered.

“Look,” Tom said, “we might be able to waive Mal’s direct involvement if we get the data. I really believe Alex has a chance with us. Does your husband have a hairbrush?” He asked it like it was a prank, something fun and silly they would do before, surprise, everything worked out on the end.

She felt cold.

“You can tell him later, once Alex has the help he needs. I doubt he’ll argue with the results.”

She made a sound, not quite a word.

“It’s just information. That’s all. It’ll be anonymized. Just make sure you get follicles—and don’t accidentally bring some of yours.” He laughed. “Once we tested dog hair. That was a genetic mystery.”

“I can’t.” she began.

“Just. Take the kit, and if the opportunity presents itself, you know. Grab it.”

“If I—don’t. Can Alex still come?”

Tom shrugged. “Sure, the initial program—that’s open to everyone. But if you want to take part in the really cutting edge stuff, you’re going to need Mal’s DNA.”

When she and Mal were first going out, he used to visit her in the room she rented just off Quebec and 14th. Every time he knocked on her window she startled. Once she fell off her office chair. He laughed, then rubbed her shoulder. “You knew I was coming,” he said. “What’s up with you?”

“I’m made like this,” she said lightly, unnerved that these unfortunate effects had returned to her, her clumsy voice, her startle reflex, her exhausting misophonia. Every time she thought she’d learned to act like a person, this happened: a new experience—puberty, love, motherhood—and she was back again, retranslating her whole changing self into a language she had never learned to speak. She had thought: Mal will be a good father. He’ll teach his kids to speak like people, and I can fade mutely into the background.

She’d thought Alex would be okay. Every time she brought it up, and every time Mal reminded her about Alex’s eye contact, his early walking, his early smile, how much he enjoyed sitting in their laps and looking at pictures, touching the pages of books. His acute hearing, when in the backyard his head raised, he pointed at the trees, and after a moment’s concentration Gracie, too, heard birdsong.

Tom talked about the fusiform gyrus, the architecture of facial recognition deep in the brain. It didn’t even work through the same channels as language because you knew faces with a part of your brain far more essential than that which decoded, say, the letters F, A, C, and E. Same with snakes. We can see them and react to them without knowing what we’ve seen. We’ll be overcome with dread, and flee, and only later realize the snake we avoided in the grass. He told her about the FOX2P gene, how it’s linked directly with human speech, but deviations in birds can affect their songs, too. Damage to that gene—or its absence—changes expressive language radically.

He talked about the growing white matter in the maternal brain during gestation, the neural networks dismantled and rebuilt to perceive signals from the prelinguistic child. Hunger. Loneliness. Fear. No conscious work, this, but communication so different from language, words seemed irrelevant. Affect, Gracie thought, but did not say it. The deep sea of meaning that underlies those flimsy little words. The richest parts of our selves beyond the reach of language, and words only float on it, moved by currents far deeper than anything they communicate, a rich, dark inlet of the great sea of meaning we cannot ever hope to speak.

“But what if,” Tom asked, conspiratorial, “there was a language that bypassed conscious representation the way snakes and faces do? It’s more like pheromones. Like music or empathy. If you hug someone for thirty seconds, you’ll both release oxytocin. It’s not about the mind—it’s about body speaking to body. It’s a kind of truth that language can never capture.”

His soothing gold tones, the sound of a sunny room full of geraniums. She thought: it’s what I feel when Alex is fractious, and I hold him until he aligns himself with my heartbeat, calm again. When he was a baby, he couldn’t regulate his temperature or his emotions. I lent him my quiet and my warmth. That’s what I was there for.

“It’s there on a cellular scale, even. If you put living heart cells together—even from different species—they’ll synchronize. I keep asking myself if that’s a kind of language. Or communication. And what kind of language would that be?”

“It’s not. It’s.”

She could not speak, but the thought formed, not a word but a series of impressions. Two people sharing something essential, filamentary connections that extended beyond the flesh, a subtle element that bypassed the siloed loneliness of the singular, repudiating the broken vessel that is the word. She thought of the way her heart hurt when Alex wept. How she knew Mal was frustrated because of the way the air crackled. How she knew he’d had a good day at work, that he was hungry. How she had known the first time he kissed her what he felt, the confusion between them, skin against skin.

“Gracie?”

“-”

“Gracie?”

“It’s.” She tried again. “It’s okay. It’s [ ].”

Their first awkward silence. He was staring at her, his mouth open, the way he always did when her carefully construction performance failed. She collected herself, looked at her phone. “Alex is done the. I better.” Then, fumbling, she picked up her bag and knocked over the chair as she stood up. Tom caught it.

“I’ll see you next—week. Our next meeting.”

“Thursday.”

At the door to the playroom, Alex threw himself into her arms. She wanted to tell Tom thank you, to say, it’s working, while Alex buzzed all the way home, a happy sympathetic hum in the back seat that warmed her, despite the rain. Before she got him out of the car seat at home, she wrote a text—Alex is so happy thanks so much—and deleted it.

Alex arrived at his sessions curious, left exhausted, descending into tears each evening. She stopped taking him anywhere but to the yellow playroom where the young woman sat cross-legged beside him.

“Aren’t you taking him to the library?” Mal asked one morning while Alex sat bashing trucks into one another.

“No.”

“Don’t you guys do story time?”

“No.”

“But. Why not?”

“Last time I took him he. He.”

Mal waited as long as he could. “What happened?” he prompted.

The little boys beside him screeched at the top of their lungs, laughing, screeching, laughing. She felt it—fingernails on the inside of her spine, beestings on her eardrums—and knew he did, too. But she had learned—after years of discomfort—to live with those noises.

The boys screeched again. Laughed. Screeched.

“Settle down,” from the tired librarian. Screech. Gracie looked around for a supervising mom. Alex crouching now, on his knees.

“Do you think,” Gracie began to say to the librarian, “we could—”

—Screeeeech—

It happened as quickly as the incident in the park, only this time she felt it like a current in water. He made that sound, [ ], then the three toddlers nearest him were on their backs, howling in an even higher register.

“He hit me! He hit me!” One of the boys shouted.

Mothers intervened. From somewhere far away, a woman with a stack of books ran toward the story circle, the boy continued to scream and tumbled at her feet. She dropped the books and gathered him up. Alex was at her feet, too, ears covered, pressed into her thigh, crying.

“What did he do?” She heard someone say.

“He knocked down like five kids!”

“He shouldn’t be here—” Bilious green disapproval on her face, like sputum sprayed from an angry teacher.

Alex’s tears on her neck, his eyes covered as though the light hurt him. His arms and legs tight knots around her, the weight of him as she dipped to pick up her bag and walked toward the door, past the arriving librarians. A voice behind them, where do you think you’re going?

She didn’t answer. He clung so tightly that his hands pinched her neck. Out onto the street, then back toward the parking lot, afraid to look up because what if they were following.

“[ ],” he said, and she felt his longing for understanding, to make the pain in his head better. She knew that pain. She had spent thirty-five years learning to manage it.

“No,” she answered.

“[ ],” he said again. This time it hit her in the chest.

“No.”

“[ ],” he said again. Strong enough to hurt, a blow right through bone to her heart.

“Words, Alex. Use words.”

He struggled, then cried. “Kids mean!” he said finally, the longest sentence he’d spoken in months.

Then her own anger collapsed, and they curled together around the hurt in their hearts. “I know. But we can’t.”

She knew Mal loved her. When she was upset in the car, he handed her a granola bar and a bottle of water he kept in the glove box because she didn’t always know she was hungry. He’d started carrying juice boxes, too, on the principle that Alex had the same problem. She knew Mal loved her because he waited on those tangled evenings when all words were garbled, and she—like Alex—threw up her hands in fists, ready to punch holes in the hollow-bodied doors of their home. She knew Mal loved her because when she used the wrong word he didn’t laugh.

She knew Mal loved her, so why was she contemplating the sterile plastic bag hidden in her sock drawer. Tom kept leaving messages. “Hey Gracie. Any luck bringing Mal around on the DNA?” his voice easy to agree with. It was no trouble at all to take Mal’s hair. A little hair—who would begrudge that? No condemnation, just an indulgent eye roll at the man’s peculiarity.

“Hey Gracie, just checking in to see if Alex is going to make the Wednesday morning appointment. Jess is going to be coming in from Toronto to evaluate kids for the second phase. It’s a great opportunity. Let me know.”

“Hey Gracie, Alex’s report came back, and I think you’ll be interested to hear a bit more about how he’s doing.”

So. She rehearsed her speech while vacuuming the living room, it’s a tiny thing that will make a huge difference. The vacuum cleaner stopped. She looked up to see Alex by the outlet, the plug in her hand, his tiny face stern.

She plugged it in again. One swipe across the floor and he’d unplugged it.

“No. Stop it, Alex.”

She plugged it—

“—NO!”

She plugged—

“—STOP.”

She gave up. He pulled his LEGOs back out onto the half-vacuumed floor and began building stacks. Rocket ships. The trunks of trees. Then Mal was home again and she said, without preamble, “It’s such a small—”

“—I just don’t get the decision. It’s the worst kind of NIMBYism. City hall declined the permit for the safe injection site, and it looks like we’re going to have to go back to the old—”

On the floor, Alex knocked over his towers.

“Could you not,” she said, “just. It’s such a small—”

“—Hey, kiddo, give your mom a break. We’ll write another proposal. But it’s a waste of time. If they’d just—” Mal’s full-bodied sneeze, so loud it surprised even him. A nail through her ear.

“—JUICE.” Alex shouted. “JUICE.”

“Say please, dude.”

“You have to give them the DNA sample.”

“Didn’t we talk about this?”

“It’s such a small—”

“—JUICE.”

“You can’t just give up on—”

“—There are a ton of other ways to—”

“—him.”

“No.”

But that is misrepresentation: the sound she made was not the English “No.” Neither was it a familiar word from the secret language. It was something new, like whiplash, a broken tooth. A sound like falling face-first on black ice. She felt its power as she shaped it not only with her lips and tongue, but with her diaphragm, her shoulders, channeled in a hurricane from her mouth.

Their silence startled her as much as the sound she’d made. Their faces blank, watching. Mal opened his mouth and closed it again. She left the room, shutting the bedroom door just as she heard Alex begin to cry.

That was magic, to say a word and have it—momentarily—open up a conduit to the reservoir of feeling in which we all float, but from which we are separated by words, words, words. She felt it in music, and in the accidents of running water or birdsong, the cries of a child. All things—death rattles and purrs and tears—that channeled the unspoken. The Enochian. The Adamic. The language of birds and angels, of the spheres, the sounds that had knit ylem into reality as we know it.

Then you could say, the house is haunted, and it would be suddenly true. Or a kid could scream out in rage and terror at another child and knock them down with the force of his anger. You could say to your husband, “[ ],” and he would comply, signing the consent form, and spitting into the DNA collection vial, his face calm and blank, as though his soul had been displaced by your voice and by the magic of [ ].

Temporarily displaced. She hoped.

There was so much she’d forgotten that now returned to her, as though [ ] had cracked something in her mind. A spring evening, when it was still cold, but you could play outside after supper. She often sat in the garden of their little house where it backed onto a ravine. There were frogs, a hunting owl, rats rooting through garden refuse, mice and voles and rabbits. Once, after the stars came out, she heard a singular note of birdsong and called back to it, wondering if it was singing in its sleep.

Until the evening she heard that sound, a scream tiny and incessant like an alarm, broadcasting its terror. It grew louder as she walked toward the ravine, and she grew more and more afraid of what it was. Not of anything the creature might do, but what had happened to it to make it cry out like that. She wanted to run away, let it die, but suffering stained the air and she stepped forward, covering her ears. Then—knee deep in the ivy—the scream intensified, and she thought maybe she’d stepped on it and now blood gushed like panic from its mouth. She’d made things so much worse. The new sound galvanized her skin, she felt, almost, as though the noise was not something she heard, but something that was now inside her brain, in her blood. It felt like alcohol on road rash, like nightmares and migraines. Like your mother turning away in brittle rage because you couldn’t stop crying.

So she ran away, the scream falling behind her, but the panic remaining. She wanted to cut the thread that bound her to that suffering creature, now burrowed into her heart.

She wished she’d dug through the ivy until she found where it was hidden. When she crept home, she had tried to talk about it over the bleed of the TV in the living room, where Mom sat smoking in the blue-dark and watched grown-up shows. “You’re too sensitive,” she’d said as she always did when Gracie wept. “It’s nature.”

But Gracie knew the truth: she should have been a braver child, defied nature, found the wounded creature, and brought it home.

By train to Toronto early the next morning. A car would collect them at Union.

“I don’t get why. Like. Why do you have to.”

She put another stack of small T-shirts in the duffle bag. She couldn’t look at him. If she did she would—“It’s okay,” she said.

“You said how long but.”

“Ten days. They do this on-site therapy. It’s supposed to be immersive. It’s okay.”

Mal yawned. “Okay.”

“You need to sign the thing.”

While he signed—slowly—the parental release form, she collected books and stuffed animals and small cars. Alex and Mal sat on the couch watching cartoons. She ordered a pizza.

“I feel like I took a bunch of cold pills. Like I just hit the DXM or something.” Asleep against Mal, Alex grumped. “You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the station?”

“We’ll cab. Way too early.”

That was a lie. Much of what she had said to Mal in the last week was a lie. She felt the ugly weight of it in her mouth, the way she had leaned into his resistance and said, it’s okay, and how that had left him fuddled and compliant. She felt how easy it would be to do this daily for virtuous reasons: to stop a fight, to put him to sleep, to prevent him from eating the chocolate he was allergic to but loved. All for his own good.

She set the duffle bag by the door and swore—in silence—that this was the last time she would ever exercise her peculiar and terrible gift. She’d get Alex the help he needed, then she’d fall silent forever. But right now—this moment, her hands shaking as she filled Alex’s backpack with snacks and small cars—she needed to be brave and reckless and dangerous.

“I’m sorry. I love you,” she said to the sleeping house. No one answered.

She lost her bearings north of Toronto, after the sun set. Soon after that, she lost reception. Their first stop in hours was at a tidy, chain-link gate. “How much further?” she asked the driver. Alex asleep in the car seat, holding her hand.

He cleared his throat, “Half an hour.”

When they stopped again, she woke, suddenly well-lit in the parking lot of a building surrounded by bush. Alex’s resistant cries as she unbuckled him, and the driver had their bags, even her purse, before she realized.

“Grace! Alex! You guys must be exhausted. We have your room set up. Are you hungry?” Tom’s familiar, honeyish voice was a relief. She was happy to follow him through glass doors to a quiet room, lux and hotel-like, a large TV, a small kitchen.

She stood at the huge windows, buzzing, an irritating, low-frequency sound that seemed to emanate from inside her own head, as though all the anxiety of the last months now flooded her auditory nerve. Alex hung in her arms like he was still a baby, his face buried in her neck.

“Do you hear that?”

Tom shrugged, “Maybe climate control? I can’t hear anything.”

But the next morning she woke with the same low buzz, like an oncoming migraine. Tom knocked at the door midmorning. For the first time in their acquaintance, he seemed brittle, nervy, his eyes bright, and his hands restless as they walked to the playroom where Alex would spend most of the next week. He showed her views from high windows, a sunny courtyard with a swing set. The unbroken horizon of boreal forest.

“Where are the other kids?” she asked.

“The last group left on Sunday, and we’re waiting for another cohort next week.”

“I thought—”

“—Alex is temporarily our sole charge, and I think he’ll really benefit from that. You ready for that, buddy?”

“Is that—”

“—you want to go play with some toys?” Tom glad-handed, cheerful. “They have some awesome fire trucks in there.”

There was room for a dozen kids in the playroom, invisibly wired—she guessed—to record every utterance. Alex alone and doubtful, holding her hand until a pretty blonde woman took him away to the coloring books by the window.

In Tom’s office she tried to breathe deeply. It should be serene: blond wood, white walls, abstract art. Tom smiling and smiling and smiling. But the sound—

As though he recognized her disorientation, he started the conversation, “So. How are you doing.” He said it like they were friends, one hand on her shoulder, with the comfortable manner that had enchanted her when they first met, which made conversation easier than it had ever been in her life. Which had brought her here.

She struggled, “I.”

“I know. But now we’re going to talk about you. And what you are.” He laughed. “God, it feels good to just tell you everything. I haven’t lied. But you had to trust me first, or I knew we’d never get you here. I’ve wanted so badly to tell you where you come from. Genetically. Epigenetically. I kind of don’t know where to begin. But you’re part of this project. A few centuries in the making.”

She licked her lips. They cracked. “What. Are you looking. For.”

“I told you weeks ago. The language the birds speak. The language of the spheres. We want to know the native language—the mother tongue—of the universe.”

There was no possible response to this statement.

“I know, it’s insane. Actually we don’t know if you speak it, exactly, but you’re closer than a hundred thousand other experiments.”

“Is there something wrong with your monitor? Where is that sound coming from?”

“It’s all been dead ends. A few hundred years ago we conjured angels in scry glasses and tried to translate what they told us. In Iowa in the 1930s, we induced stutters in the children at an orphanage because we thought perhaps the original language was socially created. We had families raise chimpanzees with human children in the 1940s. That led to more work on animals in the 1960s. We funded fieldwork in the Congo, with the gorillas. Then more primates and the isolation experiments.

“I told you about the software we wrote for Harlow. We also used it on our own archive. Centuries of stuff all integrated by machine learning. Genetic profiles and field notes. All the studies of Romanian orphans and hospitalism. It’s giving us a God’s-eye view of centuries of inquiry. Millenia, if we go back to Herodotus’ account of Psamtik I.

“This is where it gets strange. A couple of years ago that software flagged a record from the sixteenth century. Six children were placed on an island called Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth. Two young women cared for them, but were forbidden to speak to them, sing, even look them in the eye. It’s a very old experiment and it always failed, but they kept trying. Apparently, they were onto something, because in this case one of the children survived. A little boy they named Enoch. He spoke words in a language the officers did not recognize, but which made them weep. However, when it was time to take him back to Edinburgh, Enoch and the young woman were gone.”

Through her headache, Gracie was visited by a strange and irresistible conviction. The girl was young, maybe eighteen, paddling through the blackened sound under a sliver of moon, a little boy strapped to her back. They traveled north, disappearing into the highlands. She was clever and wild, and she might not have understood what was happening, but she had watched the other children die. Enoch in her arms, a changeling, a creature no longer quite human, by reason of—them. She loved him. She was brave.

“A hundred years ago—fifty years ago—we couldn’t have followed up on Enoch. But now we can access genetic databases from Scotland and the diaspora. We were identifying FOX2P mutations in the R1b-M269 group and it seemed like another dead end. Until I thought of phonemes. Jesus. I just wish I could show you everything I’ve learned, Gracie. I know you’d understand it better than I can. We had to write a bunch of new code to analyze audio, so that slowed us down for a couple of years. But ultimately it worked. We fed it everything we could find, every utterance, ever field recording. And it found this. I think she’s one of your kind. She’s singing to bring the cattle home.”

His hands shook as he found it on his phone, and she listened, while the vision of the girl and the little boy persisted in her eyes. The woman’s voice was elderly, without the range it must have once had, and her breath was short. She seemed to sway toward and away from the mic, a rhythmic swing in time to her call.

She was sweating. She gripped her knees so her hands wouldn’t shake. His eyes were brilliant, searching.

He didn’t seem to notice her fear, just showed her the image he found. “So this is where it was recorded, and this is where we found some curious genetic markers.” A scattering of red on a map. “And this is where your great-grandmother came from.” Zooming out, Grace could see that the girl had carried Enoch as far north as she could from Inchkeith.

“It’s just Gaelic,” she began. But no. Among the soft gutturals she heard something that cut through her heart, that might be mistaken for an artifact of recording, a fumble of the singer’s tongue. But it wasn’t: it was [ ] Come home, come home it sang to her, oh come home to me.

Her eyes prickled. Home was Mal and Alex falling asleep in the early evening. Was he still sunk in cobwebs as she had left him? What had she done to—

“What does it mean?”

Come home [ ] come home to me [ ] the old woman sang, now joined by the lowing of cattle down from the high field, where—

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t—”

Mal was home, alone. Oh, come home, oh [ ].

“—I can tell you recognize it.”

“It’s. Home. Like. Imagine it’s eleven and you just finished your shift at Starbucks and locked up alone and it’s raining, but you know someone is coming to get you, and you see their car turn the corner. Home.” It meant—but how would he grasp it?—Mal and Alex cuddled together, asleep. It meant the bier in darkness, and the sound of breathing animals, the rain falling outside. It meant a girl’s arms around the surviving child, carrying him to safety across the black water, guided only by the moonlight—

As she said it, the buzz in the room grew, once again, unbearable. She covered her ears.

“Say another word. Say something.”

“I don’t—”

“—Say what you say to Alex when he’s sad.”

She swallowed drily.

“[ ].”

“Say it again.”

“[ ].”

“I can almost—Sometimes I think I can. When I listened to you talking to Alex one night, when he couldn’t sleep—Don’t look so shocked. We record everything within the range of your phone’s mic. It’s in the permissions on the app. Always read the EUA.”

“Don’t—” she tried to say. “I don’t want you to—”

“Say it again.”

She started to shape the sound, but something ruptured inside her. It breached her throat, and her tongue shaped it into a sound she had never made before. [ ].

Tom cried out. Fell back like he’d been shoved. When he straightened again he smiled, and she was—how could it be?—more afraid of his smile than she had been of his demands.

“Do you know what I would give to be what you are? I tried. Salvia. DMT. Sweat lodges. TM for a while. Electroshock—I have probes in my brain originally developed to treat Parkinson’s. Back in the sixties some researchers thought trepanning was an early response to the loss of that faculty—that we could regain our ancient voice through psychosurgery. I’m slightly embarrassed to say I considered it.”

He laughed. Viscous spray from his mouth, where there had been the gold honey-tones of their first conversations.

That night, she locked and dead bolted their door and pushed a chair against it before she lay down beside Alex. He tossed and climbed and floundered, refusing to stay still long enough to fall asleep. She, exhausted, slept briefly, then awakened to find him pawing at her face.

“What is it? What’s wrong with my Alex?”

He covered his ears.

“I don’t know how to stop it. But we’ll leave in the morning, as soon as the sun comes up. I promise. We’ll talk to Daddy, and he’ll come get us.”

“[ ],” a rough-edged grunt that buzzed her eardrums painfully.

When he fell asleep—after eleven—it was in her bed with the blankets pulled up over his ears. She got up to check the locks, then sat at the open window so the sound of insects and trees could drown out the building’s whine.

She had been fighting it like a headache, but now in the quiet she closed her eyes and listened for the first time to the terrible ambient noise. It was the touch of a damp finger, a torn fingernail, a rusted wheel screaking on the edge of audibility. The flicker of the lights overhead so subtle she could not be sure it wasn’t some throb of her eyes.

“What do you want?” she asked the air around her.

What happened next was not a sound, but a bursting sensation inside her skull, like noise could shift muscle and bone and neuron with the weight of its longing. For what? For something precious and lost. For the loneliness of living in a world that cannot hear you.

She remembered Alex when he was very small and fretful, ill at ease in the first weeks out of the womb. How she had lent him her calm and her stillness and helped him through that first strange transformation from inside to outside. She hadn’t spoken, just let their heartbeats twin until he felt safe. She remembered the pain of his crying in those first weeks, her breasts heavy and leaking milk with each wail. She remembered how she had whispered nonsense syllables—or so she’d thought—into Alex’s ears, and how Mal lay there, too, and listened to the sounds of angels, and birds, and the world before Babel fell and we all lost one another, falling away into the lonely silos of our hearts and words.

She collected her phone and their bags, filled a water bottle, and wrapped Alex in the coverlet. Then out the door, quietly down the hallway where they would—if they had to—walk out. She was down the stairs to the lobby, and through the window she saw moonlight.

“What are you doing, Gracie?” Tom. Her heart accelerating. “It’s the middle of the night. Aren’t you tired?”

“I thought I heard—is there another kid somewhere? Do you have—”

“Jesus Christ! It’s not like—we don’t have a dungeon or anything. You know, I didn’t want to do this. But it should be fast. I hope. It’s a blunt instrument.”

He fumbled for his phone. It started in her neck, a familiar prickle and crawl, a wriggling finger inside her spine. She gasped.

“Alex—”

And then she recognized her own voice—but not precisely her own voice. Some process had rendered it strange to her, and terrible, but she knew the moment they’d recorded. It was the day she made Mal sign the release and give her the sample. She could hear the cruelty, the fear, in [ ], the sound of high treason committed against the man she loved.

Alex was crying. She couldn’t do anything. And Alex was crying, and now it crescendoed. The air itself grinding, like the machinery of the universe had locked up tight. The abjection of a child separated from his mother, like a rabbit dying in the ivy—the sound—

“Yeah. We got that from your phone. It seriously made me feel bad for Mal. You’re on the floor again. Don’t worry, it won’t last long—”

“You’ll like this. There are ancient records—Herodotus mentions them, and Josephus—You okay on the floor?”

The sky behind his head was blue. Somewhere, Alex was alone. The carpet beneath her was warm, surprisingly plush. She must—

“Where. Is Alex?”

“We’re going to have to start soon. You don’t have to worry about him.”

The sickly grind of a car accident inside her head. “Where,” she repeated.

Then he was talking about epigenetic triggers that produce unexpected expressions of familiar genes. CHRM2, for example—this is interesting—in a positive environment, is associated with superior intelligence. But it’s associated with mental illness and addiction in traumatic environments.

“You carry an unusual mutation of CHRM2, which is usually recessive in women. You’ve passed it on to Alex. You also have an unusually expressed HRM17, which interacts with both CHRM2 and the FOXP2. Do you understand? Four hundred years ago we triggered a change in your ancestor, and here you are. Our prodigal daughter.”

“No,” she said. The air rippled. “Stop.”

He shuddered, but his mouth still smiled.

“[ ].”

He coughed something thick and wet onto his desk. Then he had the phone again, and—

He told her: We have a dark history. We don’t want to pretend otherwise. But should we give up everything we learned in those centuries? We’re a different organization now. We reached our ethical event horizon in the last century, when we affiliated with Indian Affairs and started working on the reserves. Then in seventies, with the pit of despair, but that forced us to rethink our priorities, not least because it just didn’t work. The rhesus monkeys went mad, and when they were impregnated, they ate their own children. It’s a stain on the otherwise transcendent goal of our organization.

He told her: Some of them wanted to harvest your eggs as soon as we’d identified you, but I said no—we’ll start with the EEG and the neuronal probes and when she’s ready, we’ll think about eggs. Besides, you might need to gestate the children yourself—the parental bond is obviously important.

He told her: You can leave at any time. The doors aren’t locked.

He told her: Alex is fine. We’re not monsters.

He told her: We’re not monsters.

“[ ],” she said, “[ ].”

The nurse attached the electrodes to her scalp with a thick paste. A thin shriek from somewhere nearby, maybe the walls, startled her like ice water. She struggled to sit, and Tom smiled, and she heard the warm purr still emanating like honey from his lips. A confusion of scent and sound—

—That shriek again.

“No,” she said to the nurse. “Don’t.”

Another electrode. She filled her lungs.

“[ ].”

The nurse looked surprised. “What—” he managed to say before she inhaled again.

“[ ].”

Like your knee slamming into the stone floor. Like a finger bent backward at the knuckle. Like stepping on a nail.

He hit the floor. She had not expected the blood. She staggered to her feet as Tom fumbled for his phone, his nose bleeding.

“Gracie. Please. Don’t—”

“[       ].”

In the dark hallway she crept forward by the light of the moon, which sailed over the black boreal forest outside, and she was more lost than she had ever been. She paused at each corner to listen for a footstep, or the sound of a door closing in a concrete stairwell. Nothing. Only the whine, growing now, of something deep in the building she could not name, which nevertheless called out to her, mumbling and roaring and chattering. A social creature in total isolation, tormented by a thousand thousand simulations that nevertheless failed to teach it the language of the birds and the spheres and the angels.

She was afraid, but she must be brave and wild and clever and follow her ears and her instincts through the dark, listening at each door in turn, until she heard a tiny voice calling out.

On the other side of the door, Alex lay sedated in a hospital bed, communing with a machine. Someone taking his pulse. Someone else watching. She had never hated like this before.

“What are you—” one of them began.

“[                    ].”

She had done something. It was bad. The blond woman. The driver. Another woman she didn’t recognize.

Blood, some of it hers. The sun was far above the horizon. No cell reception. Alex sleepy, scratched the abraded skin at his hairline. The building had fallen silent, waiting for those strangers to wake again from their brief, violent sleep.

She traced the red skin and found four points, as though he’d been fixed in place, screws digging into his scalp. She found no flaps of skin where neuron-sized probes might have been inserted through a hole in his skull. She found no stitches.

“You okay?” she asked him. He said nothing, rested his head on her shoulder.

She shaded his eyes against the brilliance of the day. “It’ll get better, I hope. [ ]?”

He drank the water across her hand, then set his head down again on her shoulder.

She wondered if one of them was waking to blood trickling from nose and mouth. The red crusts in ears—burst eardrums, perhaps. She knew, only, that she had carried away her thin, feverish Alex, and that in the darkness a strange, inhuman voice had helped her. That was something. Maybe. At home, Mal waited for them, and he was afraid. She would make it right. She would tell Munira the truth. She would be brave and clever and wild.

“Can you ride on my shoulders? We’re going to have to steal a car.”

“[ ],” he responded, and she lifted him up and over her head. Somewhere above them, a bird sang.

About the Author

Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian writer and teacher whose speculative fiction has appeared most recently in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Shadows and Tall Trees. Her work has won the Sunburst and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and been nominated for the Aurora Award. NeWest Press published her first novel, The Paradise Engine, in 2013, and in 2022, Undertow Publications will publish her First World War horror novella, The Talosite. She mostly uses her PhD in Canadian literature to make up sad futures and weird fictions.

Between Zero and One There is Infinity

Shari Paul

0.1

Nil knows at once that she is no longer on the cargo vessel.

Immanuel is kneeling on the floor across from her, eyes wide, face flushed, glancing frantically at someone nearby she cannot see. That stops her for a moment, she used to have access to everywhere at once, from all angles. She turns without thinking about it, then stops again to glance back at Immanuel, stunned, and stops again when she realizes what it means. She has a body.

One head, a pair of ears, eyes, one nose, lips with a functional tongue, a flexible neck, torso, shoulders, arms, a pair of elbows, wrists, hands, ten fingers, breasts, hips, vagina, thighs, knees, shins, ankles, ten toes. She turns her head and hears the light swish of hair shifting against her clothes. She puts her hands in and draws out a pair of blue-black locs, jangling the tiny ornaments woven in. She had seen a model like this once, searching a catalog when Immanuel had fallen asleep without putting her into hibernation: the “Rasta Empress,” it had been called. A sexbot. She looks up at Immanuel again and wiggles the toes at the end of the feet stretched before her. Then she sits up.

“Captain, it’s awake,” says someone.

Nil turns her head to the speaker as Immanuel snarls, “Her name is Nil, and I told you, she’s not an AI.”

There are two women standing at the door to the garage that they are all in. The first is short, slim, and dark-skinned, with a shaved head, nose and lip rings, and tattoos along both arms. They gleam in the low light: flowers and birds and words. She meets Nil’s gaze and does not look away. The second woman is only a little lighter-skinned than the first, with a curvier build, her hair in a thick Afro. Both are dressed in workmen’s overalls and pressure suits. Neither are smiling.

“What happened to the pirates?” asks Nil.

“They are the pirates,” Immanuel replies.

The second woman scowls but the first laughs and says, “Yes. You can call me Nanny, and this is Yaa. Your name is . . . Nil?”

“Brunilda,” says Nil. “My fathers said it was the name I had when they found me.”

The two women exchange a look and Nanny asks, “Where are you from?”

“Olympus Mons, the Martian Territories,” Nil replies. She turns her head again, barely thinking of it, and looks around. There are four small spacecraft docked in the cavernous garage bay and a fifth angled toward the door. Immanuel’s attempt to escape, probably.

“What are you going to do with us?” asks Nil.

“Your friend says that he is part of the Earthbound Resistance,” Nanny replies. “How did you two meet? What are you doing all the way out here?”

“He found me when the Resistance sent him to spy on my fathers. They were Savreeni. Moltoch was the Curator of Human Artifacts and Archivist of Savreeni Records, and Tuva was an archaeologist,” says Nil.

The women turn to Immanuel, who scowls and says, “They mined our resources under the cover of archaeologist and curator. She was already like this when I met them. She says her body died when she was seven and they preserved her in the house. When the . . . Whistlers, showed up, they just left her there. I downloaded her from the mainframe in the safe room and decided to head for the Safe Zone. Mars is . . . there was nothing for us in the Olympus Mons settlement.”

Nanny nods at this, but Yaa asks, “You said that you were heading for the Resistance? That ship was heading to the outer colonies, not even close to the Safe Zone.”

At this, Nil turns to Immanuel. He meets her gaze, swallows, and says, “I can’t take her to the Resistance. They’d tear her apart looking for intel on the Savreeni.”

Nil feels a drop in her chest, a sensation like falling, and her brain tells her it is shock, “But you said that I could stay with you . . . ”

Immanuel breathes out, short and sharp, and says, “I couldn’t hand you to them, you don’t understand.”

Nil cycles through the conversations they have had since he first uploaded her in his bunk on the cargo ship and asks, “Were you just going to leave me there? Or were you running away too?”

Immanuel turns to glare up at the two women, but replies to Nil, “There’s another planet around another star that Earth sent an interstellar ship to more than a hundred years ago. We know they made it because they started picking up signals from their tech a few decades before the Savreeni showed up. They called it Theia, and there are no Savreeni or Whistlers there. You would be safe.”

“You’re a coward,” Yaa spits, glaring at him.

Immanuel lifts his chin and replies, “You can call me that if you want, but I’m not going to let anyone hurt Nil . . . not even my people.”

Nanny smiles at him and says, “Well that’s out of your hands now, isn’t it?”

Nil wonders if she should be afraid.

0.2

The pirates’ ship, Neuth, is a former military cruiser they stole years ago and retrofitted in the cloud tops of Venus, the pirate haven of the solar system. It’s also where they’re heading now, right past the ongoing war between the remaining Savreeni and Whistlers and United Earth Armies. Space is big, Immanuel had once explained to Nil, so big and so dark that it is impossible to see everything passing by. Also, Venus is on the other side of the sun from the Earth and Mars at this phase in its orbit, so no one will see their approach anyway.

They were less than three million kilometers from the inner edge of the Asteroid Belt when the pirates intercepted their cargo ship, after traveling steadily toward it for nearly a month. It had taken Yaa two days to find Immanuel and then more than a week to get Nil’s drive and upload her to a spare sexbot they had retrieved in an earlier raid.

“Don’t worry, we cleaned her thoroughly before we even put her in our storage. Thought we would sell her back on Venus. Older model, but still popular,” Xue-Li, Nil’s new roommate, explains. Nil’s new body wears a knit top with bikini underneath, cargo pants, combat boots, and copious jewelry. It is not the most practical outfit, but Nil has no need for a pressure suit. “Lucky for you.”

Xue-Li has chin-length hair and a kind smile. She was a soldier once, and now she helps Nanny raid pirate-hunting military ships and otherwise spends most of her nights with Yaa, so Nil has the room to herself. Nil spends most of the time lying on the floor getting used to the feeling of being confined and yet free. She refuses to ask after Immanuel, who she last saw in the garage bay. Xue-Li says that he has been put to work until they get to Venus. Maybe someone there will be willing to take him back out to the colonies or even the Safe Zone. Nil has already decided that she is staying with the pirates. At least they do not lie about what they intend to do with her.

“When the Savreeni and your fathers abandoned the Martian territories, they left a lot of shit behind. Shit that we can use. We want everything that you can tell us about where that shit is. Payment for the body. We could have sold it for a good price. People really like that model,” said Nanny after they had left the garage and assembled in the main mess hall.

Immanuel has been trying to explain the concept of money to Nil from the first day they met, when she said “Hello” and startled him as he sat checking his pay on the back porch of her fathers’ house. She had calculated for a moment based on the cost of similar model at the last price she saw and said, “I want a share.”

Yaa had lifted an eyebrow. Xue-Li burst out laughing, loud and long. A few of the other women—and they are all women, twenty of them, save one, in this crew—mock the captain and protested Nil’s response. Nanny, smiling slightly, had asked, “What about Immanuel?”

“He needs his own share, but you can negotiate that with him,” Nil had replied. “I want enough to pay for a new custom body and maintenance after. I will also need to cover the cost of shelter.”

“Oh, okay then. Deal,” said Nanny.

After that talk, Nil and Immanuel had been dispatched to different parts of the ship. There is an internal network on the ship, mostly for communication or playing music that sometimes leads to fights over said music, but Nil does not connect to it. Instead, she lies down on the floor and listens. Nanny’s method of interrogation was a conversation, nothing at all like what Nil has seen with Immanuel in the many movies they watched on the cargo ship. It leaves Nil feeling drained, as if Nanny has drawn out parts of her with her words. It makes her miss the quiet of the abandoned house, even with the Whistlers’ intermittent whines drawing closer, and for the first time in months, she thinks of her fathers.

Tuva and Moltoch adopted Nil when she was three years old, from a crumbling orphanage in a poor human colony that had been ravaged by yet another disease outbreak. Her parents were long dead, and Nil never quite recovered from that first illness by the time her body died. There might have been DNA, some tangible piece of her somewhere in the house, but after there had been no time to look and Immanuel was on a deadline. But Nil can go still go wherever she wants in this body, and it would last longer. She can stay with the pirates even, Nanny has promised, and make a good life patrolling the solar system. Or she can try for the Resistance that Immanuel was running away from. See if they really will tear her apart to get another kind of treasure. The possibilities are endless.

One week away from Venus, Immanuel comes to visit. Nil is in her usual place now that the planet has appeared on the horizon, an observation deck that doubles as the ship’s common room. No one bothers her here; the human crew play games or movies among themselves while the two gynoids take turns charging in their recessed ports. Nil is mildly surprised to discover that they did put Immanuel to use because his hands still have traces of grime around the fingernails when he settles in beside her.

“I wasn’t just going to put you on the ship when we got to the Asteroid Belt,” he begins without preamble. “I would never . . . after what happened to you, I was not going to make you do anything that you did not want to. I realize now that I didn’t have all the information I needed when I went to play ‘rebel spy’ at your fathers’ house.”

Nil looks at him. Immanuel up close is taller and thinner than the video cameras suggested. He walks with a slight limp due to the brace on his left leg—an old injury, the accident that killed his parents when he was a boy—and he has a trace of a rolling accent from his childhood in Scotland.

“Where would I go without you?” asks Nil. “I want to be out there; I’ve wanted to be out of that house long before you arrived but all I knew was everything I’d read. I don’t know how to . . . ” she trails off and turns back to the window. Outside the endless black is speckled with tiny pinpricks of light and just ahead a glowing, pearlescent ball, the pirate planet, Venus. The sun, huge and bright, is behind them.

Immanuel reaches for her hands, and she lets him touch them, marveling at the pressure of the hold. This is the first contact they have ever actually made and because she wants to squeeze back, she does, and she catches a tiny smile at his lips. He says, “I was going to give you the choice to come with me, you know. And if you wanted to go to Theia, I would have made sure you were settled on a good ship. I . . . the Resistance is also taking care of my little sister, and my aunt and her family are working with them, have been for years. I’m not leaving without her, or them.”

This is the first Immanuel has mentioned of family. In all the months they have known each other now, he has spent most of the time telling Nil about the world and very little about himself. Nil pulls her hands out of his grasp and asks, “You have a sister?”

“Isla,” he replies, smiling softly. “She’s about your age . . . or well, the age you should be if your information is correct. And my aunt, Caitlin, and her husband, Farouk. They live on Mars too, in Viking Colony I. The Resistance recruited them because they knew my aunt’s job put her into contact with high-ranking Savreeni looking for Terran artifacts to decorate their villas. I think Isla would like you.”

“I had no one,” Nil says, looking down at her hands, still fascinated by them. “I remember my fathers would take me everywhere when I was little but then my body died, and then they barely spoke to each other after. When you came, Tuva had just come back after being away for nearly a year. He used to carry me everywhere and then suddenly he would not even speak to me, or he would fight with Moltoch.”

Immanuel says nothing for a time after this, and they sit in silence. Immanuel is probably on a break, but Nil has no skills and so has no job. Nil suspects this is really because Yaa or Nanny are afraid of her damaging the body she promised to return to them once she gets one of her own but cannot be sure.

Finally, Immanuel says, “You have me, even if you are not happy with me right now, and you have every right to be, I’m not going to leave you alone. Whatever you decide to do.”

“What if I decide to stay with them or go to the Resistance?” asks Nil at once.

Immanuel offers a wry smile and says, “I’m with the Resistance. It would be just like going back to give them my final report.”

0.3

The sky above the cloud tops of Venus is yellow and rose gold, never-ending twilight. The pirates’ floating colony is a former research station, decommissioned shortly after the Savreeni arrived. It looks like someone had sewn at least eight hot air balloons together under an octagonal platform on which a glass-walled multilevel tent with retractable lead shields had been erected. There are several ships docked around it on all sides, and a series of zeppelins anchored at various distances, linked to the colony by lengths of nanofiber cables. This is the floating city of Saraniya.

Susie, the cook, a tall blond with a full beard and waist-length hair, stands with Nil to watch the descent. They tell her, “Welcome to the Pirate Snow Globe. The refuge of those who didn’t want to live under the Savreeni, couldn’t go to Earth, and aren’t welcome anywhere else. Thankfully for our forebearers, this place was just sitting here, forgotten. Good thing too, since the Whistlers showed up. They don’t care about it because we don’t have a lot of Savreeni here.”

Immanuel turns to look at them, brows furrowed, and asks, “There are Savreeni here?”

Susie lifts an eyebrow at him and replies, “Yes. Some of the Savreeni didn’t want to live under them either, others were escaping war. Not everyone involved in an invasion ends up well off.”

“But they’re still invaders,” Immanuel says.

Susie glances at Nil before replying, “Please remember that you’re just a guest here.”

Nanny lets the rest of the crew leave before she leads Nil and Immanuel off the ship, flanked by Yaa and Xue-Li. The station they step into is vast but packed with people hurrying about. Immanuel sniffs hopefully toward food carts scattered around the main floor, but Nanny marches them past without a word. They take an escalator up three flights, which gives Nil a view of much of the station: the docks and food court on the lowest levels, living quarters and shopping on the second, and administration on the third. There are even more levels above, which Xue-Li helpfully explains are recreation and entertainment spaces, medical and educational facilities, also, a prison.

Immanuel opens his mouth to say something, but Yaa cuts a look at him, and he wrinkles his nose and remains silent.

Nanny leads them to a blue door in a section of wall that looks no different from the others they pass, though it is at the end of a long corridor they took at least two turns right and one left to get to. The door is opened by a tall, dark-skinned man with long, curly hair, a short goatee, and rectangular tech glasses. He is also not wearing a pressure suit, though most people they pass on the station are. To Nanny he says, “What trouble is this you bring for me here? That boy don’t look like no Resistance fighter and is this a prostitute?”

“She’s seventeen,” Immanuel hisses, glaring at him.

“A baby hooker?” asks the man, with a raised eyebrow.

Nil says, “I died when I was seven and my Savreeni fathers uploaded my brain to their house. Immanuel saved me when they left me behind in the Retreat and this is the only body Nanny could give me. Who are you?”

The man’s eyes go wide, but then he grins and says, “Okay, Baby Hooker, you’re not the first Savreeni adoptee I’ve met. Xue-Li there is one. Hell, you is not even the first Upload. What makes you so special?”

Nanny, behind them, replies, “Easy there, Dmitri. One of her fathers was the Curator.”

Dmitri stops smiling. Nil stares back. He steps closer and Immanuel tugs her away. Dmitri notes the movement with a nod and says, “The Curator, huh? That was a big one, used to be talking to all them Earth leaders like they grew up together. He and all went in the Retreat?”

“The Curator is the Savreeni. Where they go, he must go,” Nil replies.

Dmitri looks at Immanuel again and asks, “I take it enough of the house is still intact that Nanny here thinks it worth the risk of running into Whistlers to recover whatever we can get our hands on?”

“The panic room was intact when we left and it’s made of reinforced materials to protect all the stuff they kept in there,” says Immanuel.

Dmitri stares at Nil for a beat then looks around them. There is no one else in this section of the station. He says, “Let’s take this inside. The last thing we need is someone overhearing this and thinking I’m actually considering this suicide mission.”

“Inside” looks like a larger version of Immanuel’s room back on the cargo ship. Everything folds away until needed, leaving only spare pieces of furniture and a screen wall playing the highlights of various sports. Dmitri goes to a touchscreen beside the door and a long, low table rises from the center of the floor. He takes the seat at one end and Nanny goes to the other, smirking at him. Immanuel settles beside Nil facing the door, while Yaa and Xi-Lue sit facing them. Dmitri says, “Does anyone want anything to drink? A charging port for the gynoid?”

“No,” says Immanuel, as Nanny replies, “That won’t be necessary.”

There is a pause, and Dmitri smiles and says, “I assure you I would not have attempted an upload.”

“We’re pirates discussing treasure and she is the map. I’ll risk offending you for my peace of mind,” says Nanny.

Dmitri laughs at that, loud and long, before turning to Nil and saying, “She has a point. Once word gets out about you, it’s best you stay away from the station’s systems as much as you can.” He stops, clears his throat, and says, “Now, tell me about this treasure in the middle of Whistler territory.”

0.4

The Whistlers are nothing like the Savreeni, or so Nil has been told. The first Nil had ever heard of them, she was still alive, and six years old. Moltoch had dressed her for a dinner party in which Tuva spent most of the evening scowling, annoyed at being separated from the artifacts in his office. Nil did not mind. When he was upset, Tuva would let her crawl all over him.

Caba, the Monitor, his fifth glass of wine in hand, announced it at the table, “The interference I picked up, it’s not background radiation disturbed by a gravitational wave.”

Nil had not understood at the time why the table suddenly fell silent. No one spoke, nor even moved. Nil glanced up at Tuva, and he tightened his grip around her tiny waist. Caba had snorted, then scoffed at them and said, “Why are you so shocked? You all knew it was only a matter of time before they found us. We still have plenty of time to find somewhere else to go or try to end it once and for all. I vote for the latter, by the way, I’m tired of running.”

“How much time do we have?” asked Moltoch, glancing over at Nil and Tuva.

“Decades, probably, a century if we’re lucky. That is, if they don’t get a boost from going around one of the bigger stars. Procyon is what the humans call that one? Yeah, cuts the time in half, easy,” he replied, and refilled his glass. “Then it’s just a few years.”

The Whistlers went around Tau Ceti instead, but by the time the Monitors had figured this out, Nil had become a part of the house and her fathers had broken up. Tuva kept the house, while Moltoch went off to join his family on Ganymede. He had left almost everything behind in the process: human and Savreeni artifacts, art, an extensive library that contained all they had learned of the solar system and Mars, and, most important for the pirates, Nil guesses, maps of the lava tubes and tunnels that had been modified to facilitate habitation of the Red Planet.

As to what the Whistlers look like, their capabilities, their weaknesses, the reason they chase the Savreeni through the galaxy, that Nil does not know. When she tells Dmitri this, he asks, “Do you know what a pirate is?”

Nil glances over at Nanny, then Immanuel, who nods, and she replies, “A thief.”

Nanny snorts at this, as do the others, but Dmitri smiles and corrects, “An entrepreneur. There is a demand for a product in limited supply, or impossible to acquire in the normal way. People like me can get the product, we ain’t afraid to use any means available to us, and our customers are willing to pay whatever we ask, no questions asked.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” says Nanny.

“Don’t act like you’re any different,” says Dmitri, glaring at her.

She shrugs and rolls her eyes, then turns her attention out the window.

To Nil, Dmitri says, “The war with the Savreeni and the Whistlers haven’t reach Earth or we here on Venus, yet, but that don’t mean it won’t. The Whistlers hard to kill, everybody know that. All you hear before you dead is the whistling of them talking to each other. But the Savreeni have been fighting them long time and they can kill them. Which means that the Savreeni have weapons that can take them out, and there are people on Earth who would be very interested in getting their hands on that.”

“People like the Resistance,” says Immanuel.

“What do you care?” asks Dmitri, lifting an eyebrow.

“I have people with the Resistance,” says Immanuel, meeting his gaze directly.

Dmitri scoffs and says, “Take it easy, you should be glad I trying to help out a situation then.”

“If the Savreeni can kill the Whistlers and we can’t, and because they have been fighting them all the time, the Whistlers haven’t come to Earth, why should we try to get in the middle of that?” asks Immanuel. “I know no one likes the Savreeni, but they have been helping us since they got here. You know these weapons aren’t going to be used against the Whistlers alone.”

“Whose side are you on?” asks Nanny.

“My own,” says Immanuel. “And Nil’s. When I went back to them after the Retreat . . . I’d told them about Nil before because that was what I had been sent to do, give them info on the Curator and his family. They didn’t care that most of the Savreeni had left, they wanted me to guide them back in there so they can ‘see what they can use and what they can sell.’ I asked them why, because with most of the Savreeni gone, the ones who remained couldn’t do anything to anybody. And then they started talking about issues in their own countries and settlements that they could help with the Savreeni technology. We don’t even have anything like Nil, they’ve tried but no one here has figured it out yet. They would tear her up trying to figure out how she works, or they would try to turn her into a weapon. I won’t let them happen.”

Dmitri looks between the two of them for a moment, and says, “I don’t care about that. It cost me a lot just to find out what exactly the Curators and them used to do. Olympus Mons is the largest community the Savreeni had on Mars before the Whistlers showed up. Even just a fragment from that collection is worth trillions, but the books and weapons are priceless—by the way, they didn’t upload anything like that to the girl, right?”

Immanuel’s eyes widen in alarm, but Nanny answers for him, “No. You know that would have wiped out everything else and made her a full AI. Everything you want is still in that room and the girl just tell you the room intact.”

“The weapons wouldn’t be in there,” says Dmitri.

“No, they aren’t,” Nil confirms. “But the Cache was under the Community House.”

Once again, all eyes go to her. She shrugs, her new favorite thing about having a body, and says, “It’s a magma chamber, and they reinforced it. If I was going to hide anything, it would be there.”

Dmitri looks back to Nanny and says, “I can give you fifty million for the girl.”

“No!” says Immanuel, at once, slamming a fist down onto the table. He winces a moment later.

Dmitri just smirks and says, “Don’t worry, this is a group project. We’ll need at least three crews just to get to Mars in the first place. Another two for security and two more for the labor. But we won’t have that. One crew, maybe a few more people than the ones already in this room and absolutely no guarantees that we’re going to get out alive.”

“We also can’t let the Resistance find out about this, unless you want them to cut out the middleman,” says Immanuel. “They sent me to get information, if they know about her, they won’t need you.”

“Do we have an agreement?” Dmitri asks Nanny.

Nanny looks over at Nil, who stares back at her. It takes her a moment to realize that Nanny wants her approval. She nods and Nanny says, “Yes, we do.”

0.5

There’s no real nighttime on Saraniya. They had been invited to stay with their new business partner, but Nanny had refused, insisting that it was much less suspicious for them to take beds at one of the several pod hotels on the station. And so Nil sits on the floor near Immanuel’s pod in the mixed dorm as he calls the family he never told her he had.

“Hey, Auntie. How are you guys?”

The woman who replies sounds young, her voice bright and clear as she says, “Good to see you’re not dead. Where have you been for the past few?”

Immanuel clears his throat and says, “Working my passage home. Told you that I got hired onto a new ship. The crew’s good to me. You don’t have to give me that look, I’m not lying.”

“You shouldn’t have to do this. I wish you hadn’t signed up for this.”

“But I did,” says Immanuel.

There is a sigh on the other end and then the woman asks, “You told me that you were trying to get a friend out. Did you?”

Immanuel glances over at Nil and replies, “Yes. They’re doing better than I expected. They probably don’t even need my help anymore.”

“Well, that’s good,” says his aunt. “Please let them know that they’re free to stay with us for as long as they need.”

Nil lets the invitation wash over her for a moment before looking away from him altogether. He had not been trying to take her to their house. Nil stands and checks the power levels on her body: battery ninety-three percent, all systems operating at full capacity. As she moves to go, Immanuel looks up and asks, “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

“Just outside. I won’t get lost,” she replies.

He rises, ready to follow, and she repeats, “Nanny’s crew is all over this station. No one’s going to let anything happen to me.”

He stares at her for a few beats and says, “Please return in an hour. You shouldn’t use up too much energy until we get back on the ship.”

She gives him her best approximation of a smile and walks out of the pod room.

The shutters around the station have been closed, sealing out the planet’s long daylight for the next several hours so the humans within can continue to have some measure of a circadian rhythm. But the activity within seems to have increased. As Nil makes her way through the open promenade, she nearly collides with several groups of people, human and actual Savreeni speaking a variety of languages and dialects, gathering around food stalls and kiosks selling miscellaneous goods and services. There are charging ports for handhelds and gynoids like her. She thinks she spies another “Rasta Empress,” though this one is wearing a jacket over her net top.

She stops for a while near one of the food stalls. She hasn’t needed food in a decade, her new body detects the scent of salt, turmeric, geera, a variety of meats, artificial beef, chicken, and fish, and cooking oil used too long. The next stall has more chicken and oil smells, but also sweet doughs, vegetables. Savreeni food carried similar scents and over the centuries they had adapted styles from the human settlements. She considers getting a snack for Immanuel, then remembers that she doesn’t have any money.

On the other side of the station from the food stalls are a series of brightly lit booths advertising card and slot games. There are at least two bars, above one of which is a screen playing a light aircraft race going on somewhere else on the planet. Someone says, “They’re not catching Morningstar, that girl flies like a bird.”

Nil wanders past all this watching the people. Parents and their children, couples and triples holding hands, groups sitting together drinking or talking or eating. The maintenance staff are all AI, so people either step around her, mistaking her for one, or give her speculative looks if they don’t. There are more screens on the walls, more races, but also news reports, digi-dramas, talent competitions, and one documentary on the history of humans on Mars. Nil pauses before this one—the images suggest that they’re going to discuss the arrival of the Savreeni—when a woman steps into her line of sight and says, “You must be new here. Did you come with Nanny’s ship?”

Nil steps back, blinking at the woman, immediately searching the station’s database for the woman’s face and ID. Tall, slim, curly brown hair, blue eyes; she’s a pilot, captain of a light ship called Morningstar. Nil asks, “Shouldn’t you be racing?”

“That was earlier. What’s your name?” asks the woman.

Nil looks down at herself. She hasn’t changed her gynoid’s clothing, so she looks like any other model. So why is the woman speaking to her?

She says, “I don’t have what you’re looking for. I need to go back; my people are waiting for me.”

The woman slings a heavy arm around Nil’s shoulders and says, “Did you two think you could just run away from the Resistance?”

“What Resistance? Resistance to what?” asks Nil, looking around at the other people for any sign of Nanny’s crew.

The woman starts leading her away, toward the berths where the ships are docked. If Nil gets on one of those ships, she knows she will never see Immanuel again. She uses all the strength she has access to in her artificial body and pushes into the woman’s side, sending her sprawling. The woman cries out as she falls, surprised, almost colliding with a kiosk, people scatter, shocked, clearing a path, and Nil runs.

Two large men step into her path, arms folded. A moment later, their eyes go wide, and they unfold their arms and hold them up in surrender. Xue-Li and Yaa stand behind them, guns trained at the back of their heads. Nanny swivels ’round from a nearby stall and says, “You’ve wandered too far from home, little rabbit. Go back before the wolves catch you.”

Nil drops her head, trying to make herself invisible and small, and walks away as quickly as she can, directly back to the pod hotel. Immanuel is already packing his bag when she enters, and says, “Nanny sent me a message. We have to get back on the ship. We’re leaving immediately.”

Nil pauses in the doorway and says, “They were waiting for us. How did they know?”

“They didn’t, probably not. Nanny’s crew wouldn’t talk so it’s probably that they were waiting around hoping I would show up somewhere. Let’s go,” says Immanuel.

He leads the way out, and they’re greeted by Nanny. She takes the lead without a word, and they make their way back to the ship. Activity in the station carries on as if it hadn’t been interrupted by Nil’s walking tour. When they get back on board, Nanny says, “They’re not going to let us leave just like this. Go to your cabin and don’t come out unless we let you or the ship is breaking up.”

“Are you going to try to ram your way out?” asks Immanuel, eyes wide.

“If we have to,” says Nanny. “Now go.”

Nil goes directly to her cabin and closes the door in Immanuel’s face when he makes to follow her. Then she lies down on the floor listening to the ship. Her room is completely sealed shut. There are pictures of Xue-Li and Yaa all over the wall, and in some of them Xue-Li is in her old military uniform. Only one has a picture of her Savreeni adoptive parents, both at least a foot shorter and several shades darker than her, so they must have been descendants of one of the tropical lands of the Savreeni home planet.

The ship shudders and swoops around her. Nil slides slightly on the floor but doesn’t get up. There is nothing but silence again for a time, and then Nanny’s voice comes on over the PA, “We’re clear. Rendezvous with our friend in twelve hours.”

So, Nil thinks, still lying on the floor, that was the Resistance.

0.6

They approach Mars as they had Venus, sunward and radio silent. The retrofit on the ship makes it appear no different from the literal billions of asteroids, comets, and other space junk orbiting the yellow star at the center of the system. Nil spends her days watching the rust red planet grow bigger from the observation deck. She had not seen Mars when they left, and the pictures she’d come across over the years barely did justice.

Part of the desert planet is covered in a growing dust storm, engulfing everything in its path in featureless clouds that would hang around for several months. The rest is pockmarked with the remnants of centuries of terraforming projects, above- and underground colonies, and the last devastating war. On the nightside, the dust clouds glow with flickering lights like flames as the remaining colonies’ solar-powered power stations struggle through the storm. The Olympus Mons Savreeni colony is the brightest of them all. None of the humans have ever figured out the secret of their power source, and with the Whistlers roaming about, claiming the entire region around for hundreds of kilometers, no one is willing to try.

“The Savreeni would have picked us up by now but the Whistlers haven’t. They’re going to when we try to land though,” Nanny says to Dmitri.

Dmitri sips from a pack of rum, brewed from aeroponic sugarcane, and says, “Yes, but if your pilot is as good as you say they are, we should be underground before they get there.”

Their destination is the Community House, the central administration building of the Savreeni colony. The colony, like most Martian settlements, is mostly underground, with the surface buildings under a dome, arranged in a series of rings leading to a central park. The Community House takes up the last ring, and in another life had been surrounded by lush greenery, trees transplanted from Earth in previous lifetimes and kept alive by underground water that was spread as mist through the dome every morning. Now, even the dome overhead is broken, so that their smaller, though heavily armed shuttle slips in through a paneless hexagon and descends quickly to the dusty, frozen ruin.

Immanuel glances over at Nil and says, “It wasn’t like this.”

Nil does not know but nods.

Yaa at the controls with Xue-Li, says, “Mars is ruthless.”

Dmitri wants to go for the weapons directly, even though Nil and Immanuel both tell him that the Whistlers have overrun the place. Nanny hired him for his weapons and mercenary skills, after all, and though small, their shuttle is heavily armed.

The moment they enter the atmosphere over the Savreeni colony, the whistling starts. It’s a high-pitched screech that ripples through the speakers in a series of alternating tones like whale sounds put through an electronic filter. It grates at even Nil’s ears and Dmitri curses.

Immanuel tightens his grip on his seat in the main deck and says, “We should have gone to Nil’s house. There weren’t any Whistlers around when we left.”

“Shut up boy!” snaps Dmitri, a moment before something slams into the right side of the ship and sends them skating sideways through the air.

“Oh no!” cries Xue-Li.

“Brace for impact!” Yaa yells, just as the shuttle’s rear clips the side of a building. The shuttle swings away in the other direction. Immanuel grabs for Nil’s hand, but Xue-Li and Yaa are experienced pilots and quickly right the ship.

Nil reaches for the ship’s onboard diagnostics but there is no connection to let her through. Instead, her ears pick up a cacophony of alarms and rapid-fire messages over the speakers. Extensive damage to the right side and left rear of the ship. Fuel intact. Electronics damaged on the right side, cargo door damaged, unable to open, and there was briefly a fire. There are people in the cargo bay, Venusian pirates, including one Savreeni refugee who Dmitri had hired. Nil cannot pick up any vitals from anyone on board, even with Immanuel still holding her, and the ship does not supply them.

“We’re going to the Curator’s house! Change of plans!” Nanny commands.

“We right over the Community House!” Dmitri protests.

“And if we stay here, we will die!” Nanny says. Then she turns to Immanuel, “Take us to the Curator. Where is their house? We can make our way back another way.”

“This is nonsense!” Dmitri yells.

“Yaa! Make sure this man don’t interfere,” says Nanny.

“Yes ma’am,” Yaa replies.

“What?” asks Dmitri, a moment before a series of metal bars curve over his chest and hands. “Nanny, girl, what you doing? Is double-cross you double-crossing me?”

Nanny ignores him, turning to Immanuel and asks again, “Where’s the Curator’s house?”

“At the foot of Olympus Mons, the north side. You can’t miss it, it’s the only house there,” he says.

“Xue-Li, you heard that?” asks Nanny.

“Already setting the course. It’s going to be bumpy though, there’s a lot of them on our tail,” Xue-Li replies.

“That’s alright,” Nanny replies, then she reaches for one of her earrings and says, “Susie, a distraction please.”

Nil does not hear whatever the cook says in return, but moments later there is a deafening explosion, the shockwave of which rattles the entire ship.

Immanuel turns to Nanny in alarm, eyes wide, and says, “What are you doing? It’s not just Whistlers on this planet.”

“Do you want to get off this planet alive or not?” she asks.

Immanuel does not reply.

0.7

One afternoon, without prompting, Immanuel confessed to being a spy for the Earthbound Resistance. Nil, who had never come across any such thing in any of her web-surfing around Mars’ Internet, had asked, “What’s that?”

The Retreat was still weeks away, so Tuva was at work in his basement museum, which he barely left these days except to eat, rest, and pay Immanuel’s wages. He never walked around the grounds anymore, so Nil had no idea why he kept the groundskeeper. As far as they knew at the time, the boy was an immigrant alone on Mars, with no one back on Earth waiting for him and no other prospects in the colony. At Nil’s question, Immanuel had just stared at her for a moment and then replied, “There are people on Earth and in this colony who have been working to get the Savreeni out. We were here before they arrived, this is our solar system, and they just came in and took over a planet. We can’t just let them do that. Humans have been trying to set up colonies all over this system for almost a thousand years now. We don’t have room for anyone else. And what if others come?”

A quick web search confirmed what he said about human settlements, extending even to icy Titan with its methane-powered colonies. But the solar system was more than seventy-nine AU wide, and humans had barely inhabited more than a few million kilometers, and not even entire planets except Earth at that. So, Nil had turned to him and asked, “But why can’t we share?”

He had stared at her for a moment, then said, “Because it’s ours. We were here first, and we should decide who comes and stays here.”

Nil considered this. She had read many articles on human history and development, from Earth to the solar system. There were several that detailed what happened when the inhabitants of one place were met by new arrivals, none of it good. But none of that had happened when the Savreeni came to Mars. There were human settlements, but the one around Olympus Mons had fallen into decline. The human leadership had welcomed the refugees, as the Savreeni were called, and even helped them build up the colony. Later, humans began working for them and the colony expanded as more Savreeni arrived. By the time Nil had been born, three hundred years after they first arrived, nearly half of Mars was Savreeni land.

Of course, there had been clashes. Some humans had not taken kindly to the Savreeni, and some Savreeni did not want the humans in the colony they developed. But officially, there were no disagreements, and anyway, Nil’s parents were Savreeni and loved her, so she said, “But this is their home now, too. Where do you want them to go?”

“Somewhere else. There are other planets around other stars. Why did they have to come to this one?” he asked her.

Nil thought this was a strange question, and replied, “Because they can live here, like us. Their old world was like Earth, but they didn’t try to go to Earth because they saw that the planet had people on it and this one only had a few. Why do people on Earth want them to go? And they’ve brought good things for us, they’ve helped people on Mars and Earth so that they can build up the colonies.”

She pulled up hologram articles for him to see, but he waved them away with a hand and said, “They’re taking more and more of this planet, and their Curator, your father, has been collecting information on humans for a very long time now. What’s going to happen to us when they take over here and then try to take the Earth and the whole system? Where do we go?”

Nil had no answer to his question then, and she decided that she didn’t want to hear any more of it and left him. But she never told Tuva, and then the Retreat happened, and she woke up in the quiet house alone. It would be weeks with no answer, no calls to the house, no reports in the news feeds, which eventually stopped coming, and Nil was forced to break the firewalls to get information from the surrounding colonies. Then she learned that the humans had been fighting the Whistlers for weeks with no idea where they had come from or why, and that the Savreeni were gone.

Nil had tried to send multiple messages to Tuva all that time but received no response and his basement museum remained locked. It was another two weeks before Immanuel showed up, looking dirty and disheveled, his limp worse than usual, but also so happy to see her that he’d tried to hug her hologram.

The Curator’s house has a few more scorch marks than Nil remembers but it’s still standing. Nanny whistles sharply at the sight, which startles Dmitri so that he nearly drops for cover. He turns to look back at her, and Nil can just see his glare, but Nanny ignores him and says, “I’d heard about this place, didn’t expect it to be so . . . normal.”

“Tuva liked simple things,” says Nil.

There is no whistling over their comms and no sound of approaching vehicles from above or the nearby road. The two-story house is quiet as well, the only place in which some trees still have green leaves. Immanuel says, “I knew those trees were a good idea.”

He has his hands on his waist, inspecting his work, but Nil can’t see his face to be sure of the smile she thinks he’s wearing. The others are all in atmo-suits, even Dmitri, who had been released as soon as they landed. He pushes past Immanuel to step out onto the lawn, looking back at the rest of the colony. The fire from the Neuth’s attack has gone out in the thin atmosphere, but the Whistlers’ sleek silver ships swirl around the site.

“This better be worth it. Look how far away we are,” he says.

“You can always go back and let them kill you,” snaps Nanny.

He starts to reply, but she is already walking into the house, followed by her crew. His own men—and they were four men, including the Savreeni, Toman—get off the ship after him and stop to stare at Nil for a time. Then Toman says, “Back home, they would have locked them up for what they did to you.”

“What?” Nil asks.

“Let’s go, we’re wasting time,” says Dmitri, and he leads the way inside.

The inside of the house is exactly as Nil left it. Tuva was a minimalist, only essential furniture, and decoration, easily packed away at a button to make space when needed. Moltoch made sure that the pieces were extravagant, crafted with the finest materials traded from Earth. A few of Dmitri’s men cast appraising looks over the room and one of them says, “We shouldn’t leave this stuff to rot.”

“Not now,” says Dmitri.

The others have disappeared into the depths of the house, heading straight for the museum. The house is still fully powered, and Nil connects to the wireless. Her awareness expands and yet it feels like the house is enveloping her in an embrace. Alongside the power levels of the generators, the exact number of items in the storage and the state of their freshness, the exact number of Whistlers testing the periphery of the security shield, just one for now, searching for a weakness that it can exploit, she can finally feel the presence of the others. Nanny and her crew and Immanuel.

Immanuel still wears the band that allows him access to the house. It won’t let him and the others into the museum basement, but it does let her know that his sugar is low, he has too much painkiller in his system, probably for his knee, and that his heart rate is slowly rising. She marches off to meet him before he comes up again to look for her, and then nearly stumbles when she senses something else. There are more humans nearby, on the other side of the house from the Whistler, but underground. Had the Resistance caught up with them but followed quietly? Or was this another band of scavengers?

She gets into the lift, as it’s faster, and Dmitri and his men hurry in after her. One of them nudges the other but says to her, “You look nice.”

Toman says, “She’s a child.”

The man glances over at him and Dmitri says, “She’s the key to this whole business so if you mess with her, you’re not leaving this planet.”

The rest of the ride is silent. Nil slips out of the elevator before the doors open completely and runs over to where Yaa is attempting to break into the museum door.

“Stop! I’ll do it,” Nil says.

The woman steps back and Nil takes the keypad from her hand and enters the code she has known since Tuva entered it: the date he met Moltoch. The panel lights blue and the doors slide open, and then Nil says, “Someone is trying to get in here from the other side. They made a tunnel. But there’s another way out.”

Dmitri and his men walk past them into the room, and he says as he goes, “Who else you talk to before you come to me?”

“I should be asking you that,” says Nanny. “Is double-cross you trying to double-cross me?”

Another voice speaks up then, familiar, though Nil has not heard it in months, saying, “No, I am the one who should be asking the questions. Who are you, and why are you here?”

Nil runs past them into the room to find her father sitting at his desk, staring back at her.

0.8

Tuva looks, if possible, no different from how he did when Nil last saw him, and yet she almost does not recognize him. And then she looks again and catalogs the changes. He’s slimmer, younger, not a trace of sadness in his eyes, and he’s still wearing the earring Moltoch gave him. Then his image ripples slightly and she stops, frozen, stunned, but reality won’t let her deny it. This isn’t Tuva, at least not the Savreeni she had last seen before the Retreat, but an Upload, like her.

“Tuva-sim?” asks Immanuel, stepping into the room after them.

Tuva glances at him, then back at Nil and the others. She feels the processing, it is merely microseconds, and then he says, “I failed.”

“What?” asks Nanny. Then she turns to Nil and asks again, “What is he talking about?”

Nil cannot answer. Tuva speaks anyway, more to himself than anyone else, “No, they’re here but they can’t get in. There’s still time. They’ve taken over the external networks, but they can’t get in here.”

“What?” asks Nanny again.

Dmitri says, “He’s like the girl. He’s not really here, he can’t do anything. Didn’t she say that there’s another team coming in? Let’s get out of here.”

Dmitri walks to a nearby wall and asks, “Hey, girl, where’s the exit you talking about? I’m not seeing anything in here worth taking except the furniture.”

Nil replies without thinking, “The tunnel is in the back, in the storage room for the fragile artifacts.”

“Right,” says Dmitri. He turns and leads his men in search of it.

“Hey, this is my job,” says Nanny, heading after him.

Nil does not follow, and neither does Immanuel. Tuva watches the others go and turns to Nil and says, “It took me forever, but I know how to stop them. It won’t work for all of them, for that we need to go back to the source, but I can help you get rid of the ones on this planet. They’re all connected to the mainframe in the Community House. I need you to upload me to the mainframe.”

Immanuel asks, “Why didn’t you do it yourself? Isn’t this house connected?”

“No, I had to cut us off to stop them from finding me. And then I had to set up the shield to keep them from getting in when they noticed my feelers,” Tuva replies.

“Since when do you know how to do any of this?” asks Immanuel. “And why didn’t you try to do it before? Why did all of you just take off when the Whistlers arrived?”

Tuva glances at Nil and replies, “I didn’t leave. My body is somewhere in the street near the Community House. If I didn’t already hack into their system, I couldn’t have used the upload to escape.”

The lights flicker slightly as a flood of images sweep past Nil’s eyes. Footage from the several weeks Tuva spent in the basement museum. He spends most of the time first learning, then creating and discarding multiple programs to unravel a code from Whistler tech that had been among the Savreeni artifacts in the museum. He also teaches himself how to use some of the older weapons they have locked away. Some days he slips through the basement, using still-valid credentials to access the records in the Community House, making friendly conversation with fellow Savreeni packing up for the Retreat. All this time he ignores Moltoch’s many messages and calls and on one occasion blatantly ignores him in the street.

“At least tell me how Nil is doing!” Moltoch calls after him, and Nil is surprised to hear her former father mention her name. He had not called her by name once after the upload.

Tuva walks away. Long before they had even come to Mars, Tuva’s own mother, a Seer, had told him that he and Moltoch would not last more than a century. She had been off by a day, but no more than that. They had been having little disagreements in the weeks leading up to Nil’s death, as Moltoch devoted all his time to caring for the tiny child, and Tuva was locked away in his basement. Now Nil knows, and Moltoch never will, that Tuva had also spent that time trying to find a cure.

Nil meets Tuva’s gaze then and asks, “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I couldn’t save you, but I can save this world, I can make it safe for them to get to the next star,” Tuva replies.

“What is he talking about?” asks Immanuel.

“I told you,” says Tuva. “I have a way to save us, but I need you to do what you did before. I need you to download me and get me into the mainframe of the Community House. I can do everything from there.”

The images are still playing before Nil’s eyes. She sees Tuva come to a discovery that stops him completely in his tracks for several days. He actually drops the Whistler artifact when he realizes what he’s holding and stands for several seconds staring at it in horror.

Tuva says, “We made them.”

“What?” says Immanuel.

“What?” says Nanny, coming back with the others.

Tuva keeps staring at Nil and replies, “The Whistlers. It’s the reason the Uploads weren’t allowed, why Moltoch was so mad at me no matter how much he loved you and wanted you back. Our people made the Whistlers and then we lost control of them, and they have haunted us across the stars ever since. They’re Uploads like Nil. Some of them were recently deceased, some were volunteers trying to stave off death, a few were AI as well, and then things went wrong. There had been fights from the beginning over the Uploads, laws were drawn up, there were protests and even sabotage to destroy them . . . and then they decided to fight back.”

“Blasphemy!” Toman spits.

Tuva turns to him and says, “I have spent my entire life studying the Whistlers, trying to preserve the artifacts of our people for future generations. If I am lying, then where did they come from? Why are they after us? Because they want our land? We left our world millennia ago. They want our bodies? We created them and we lost control of them and now they hunt and kill us. And they will never stop because they can replicate themselves and we banned our people from trying to fix it and chose to flee instead.”

The Whistler at the boundary tests it again, an enquiring message, requesting entry to the house. Tuva’s shield does not acknowledge it.

“If we download you, they’ll overrun the house. We might not be able to escape in time,” says Nil.

“Then you better be quick,” says Tuva. “But I’ve laid a trap in the system, so you better get Nil out of here first.”

“Door’s open,” says Xue-Li. “Someone should go move the ship so we can get out of here later. How do you want to do this?”

“Where’s the other group of humans?” asks Nanny.

Tuva replies, “They’ll break into your tunnel soon. You should try to get out ahead of them.”

“Okay, Xue-Li get the ship. Take two of these men with you and meet us at the Community House. Dmitri let’s go through the tunnel,” says Nanny.

Captain looks at her and asks, “What about them?”

Nanny looks over Nil and Immanuel and says, “They can do whatever, the tunnel’s open.”

She turns at once to go, dragging Dmitri by the arm. Xue-Li and the others have already left. Only Toman remains, staring at Tuva. Nil turns to Immanuel and says, “Do it. We have to hurry.”

“How do you know that what he’s saying is going to work?” asks Toman.

Nil looks at him and says, “He saved me, didn’t he?”

Immanuel walks over to Tuva’s desk. The drive is already in the processor. It is the twin to the one he had used to download Nil, which he had been given by the Resistance to get information on the Curator but had mysteriously lost his second day on the job. Of course, Tuva must have suspected him and stolen it.

Tuva smiles at him and says, “I will leave a command that will keep the system intact long enough for you to get into that tunnel. Don’t look back.”

Immanuel does not reply, taps the screen, and the command prompt is waiting for him. He touches it once, and the download begins and then ends in a matter of seconds. The Whistler tests the shield again and this time it gives. The lights flicker as the feelers spread through the system. Nil snatches the drive from the processor and starts running for the tunnel, Immanuel and Toman at her heels.

She feels the moment the Whistler accesses the processor and smacks against a wall. Tuva’s trap. A single message flashes through her mind, “Go!”

Toman pulls the door shut behind them. There’s a maglev shuttle waiting. There are similar shuttles all over the colony, but Tuva and Moltoch had a personal route. As they get to the door, one wall of the tunnel crumbles and they hear the shouts as the humans on the other side celebrate. Toman hops into the shuttle first, and Immanuel shoves Nil in, then squeezes in next to her.

The shuttle starts up as soon as the door closes, the route already entered. As they speed away from the house, it vanishes from her senses. Tuva’s trap has sprung, and Nil realizes with horror what it is, an electromagnetic pulse that wipes the entire system. Now the house will be open to anyone but useless to the Whistlers. There’s no going back.

0.9

Nanny greets them as they arrive at the Community House, some twenty minutes later. The shuttle had been programmed to stop before the station and when they get out Nanny says, “Whatever your father did has them riled up. Can’t use any channel on the radios. The screeching is enough to make your ears bleed.”

“Isn’t that why you brought that guy?” asks Immanuel.

“Yes, he’s setting charges as we speak,” says Nanny.

“Charges? We’re blowing our way in?” asks Immanuel, voice rising to nearly a squeak at the end.

“You have a better way? There’s only so many distractions Susie can give before the Martians get brave enough to intervene,” says Nanny. “And anyway, this is not that kind of explosive.”

Dmitri jogs over to them with a grin. “Doors are open. Now where’s the cache?”

“The Hall of Human and Savreeni Cooperation,” says Nil.

“Wasn’t that area open to the public?” asks Nanny.

“Yes, some of the artifacts on display are weapons, and there were more in the storage rooms in the back,” she replies.

“And the ammunition?” asks Dmitri.

“They’re always armed,” says Nil.

Nanny and her crew exchange looks, then she asks, “And where do you need to go for whatever it is that you’re doing? Is it going to bring the building down on our heads?”

“If the Whistlers have taken over the network, then we should go to the Hall of Connection. It’s where the mainframe is. I don’t think it will bring the building down but if you want to get out to sell your treasure you should do it quickly,” Nil replies.

“Well then, let’s get those weapons first,” says Dmitri.

There is nothing waiting for them on the other side of the underground entrance. Everything is reddish-pink, covered in a thin layer of Martian regolith, blown in from somewhere above. Nil takes the lead, tracing a path through the building she had made many times by camera feed from home. Through the entrance, down the stairs to the left, continuing along the curving corridors to an open doorway on the right. Nil turns into the doorway and is slapped back into the hall, alerts and warning messages flashing across her eyes, “Warning: major malfunction detected. Upper left shoulder failure of epidermis, silicon, and carbon fiber skeleton. Shutting down left arm to preserve function.”

She looks up to find Immanuel in front of her, hands hovering over the upper left side of her shoulder, eyes wide in horror. Something has shot her. In the background, the others are returning fire. Laser flashes and the flares of the projectile weapons as they try to clear a path for themselves. She pushes Immanuel out of her way, stands up, and says, “I don’t feel it. I can’t use my arm, but I don’t feel it.”

“Is there another way in?” calls Dmitri over his shoulder.

“There are stairs and a lift, but they are all protected by passes we don’t have. If we can get into one of the offices, maybe we can access and override the system,” she replies.

“Why didn’t you suggest that first?” Dmitri demands, turning to glare at her.

“Because the offices are all in the upper areas, in the opposite direction from where we want to be, and where most of the Whistlers have gathered anyway,” she replies.

“And besides,” adds Nanny, “I don’t think it matters anymore now that they know that we’re here.”

“So, you think we can just shoot our way down?” asks Dmitri. He turns to Nil, “What about that Savreeni hologram thing? Can’t we just insert him somewhere? Didn’t he set up a shield around your house?”

“That was different. He always had control of the house. To do any of that I need to get to the Hall of Connection,” she replies.

“We’re wasting time and ammunition,” says one of Dmitri’s men.

“Damn it!” Dmitri spits. To Nanny, he says, “I suggest we take the stairs. I might be able to disable the locks, and we can control some of the attacks.”

Suddenly, the speakers crackle to life through the building and high-pitched whistles pierce the air. Immanuel presses his palms over his ears while Dmitri, Nanny, and the others wince. Nil takes it for the warning that it is and runs for the stairs.

The doors burst open before she gets there and a Whistler steps out, guns blazing. Up close, they are terrifying creatures. They look like the Savreeni, humanoid in form, but with a carbon-fiber exoskeleton protruding from their flesh. Nil gets another warning message, a hit to her thigh, but she dives through the Whistler’s legs as Dmitri hits it in the chest with an explosive round. The shot tears its back open and it collapses.

Immanuel limp-runs over to her, reaches for her thigh, stops himself, and says, “If you get hit in anything major, you will die in this suit.”

“I’m going to the Hall of Connection,” says Nil. “If I don’t go, we’ll all die in here. You can stay with them and get the weapons. I can get hit.”

“Just because it doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous!” Immanuel says, nearly crying.

Nil looks past him to the others. Nanny nods and Yaa grabs Immanuel and drags him back. He turns to her, eyes wide, sputtering, “What? What are you doing?”

“Remember, you promised,” Nil says, keeping her eyes on Nanny.

Dmitri glances between them and says, “Toman, go with her.”

“No!” Immanuel protests.

“Toman can shoot. He’ll bring her back,” says Dmitri.

Nil puts on a smile for him, then turns and leads the way down the corridor with Toman at her heels. Moments later, she can hear the slight scuffle as the others drag Immanuel after them to the weapons store.

Toman is silent for most of the way, only tapping her shoulder every now and then so that he can go ahead to scout their direction. Nil lets him take the lead, even when he lingers to stare at video loops playing along the walls or images of former leaders of the Savreeni colony. The Savreeni were long-lived, some of them were still alive and had gone in the Retreat; Nil wonders if he knew them.

The Hall of Connection is in the lowest level of the Community House. Nil has followed staff heading to this place more than once, but never entered the room because that was where the feeds ended. She turns to Toman at the door and says, “We will have to break in. I don’t know the pass.”

Toman aims at the screen beside the door and fires. The screen explodes in sparks and flying splinters, but the doors do not open. Nil asks, “Why did you think that would work?”

Toman does not reply but shoots the doors where they meet in the middle, blasting a hole through one door. Then he reaches through, pulls, and pushes the door open. Nil waits as he goes inside but after almost a minute of silence, she follows and stops in her tracks.

A normal computer bank would be filled with servers, but this room is full of beds. And on each glass coffin-bed lays a Savreeni. They are of different ages, genders, ethnicities, all dressed in simple silver-gray pressure suits, and deeply asleep. But no, not asleep. They are all alive, eyes moving beneath their lids that corresponded to the images on the walls next to them. These are the processors managing the Community House and the colony.

“What?” says Toman.

Nil looks around and finds the one computer in the room, then inserts Tuva’s drive. As soon as he uploads, his hologram appears beside her, looks around, and says, “Yes, this is . . . yes.”

Toman turns to him, eyes wide, and says, “What is this? Did you do this?”

“No,” says Tuva, looking around again. “This is all part of it and the reason why the Whistlers keep finding us no matter where we run to. Why let these processors go to waste no matter how many times they turn on us? Why lose all this knowledge when the body dies?”

Toman is shaking his head, looking around wildly. Nil keeps her attention on the screens, looking for any sign of the other Whistlers noticing their intrusion. Tuva continues, “It was our greed that did this. We already live for so long, why should we try to get more time? Why shouldn’t we appreciate the time we are given? Why won’t we let go of those we’ve lost?” He turns to Nil and says, “My mother told Moltoch and me that we would only have a century and what did I do with most of that time? I went looking for other people’s artifacts. I did not spend enough time with you. But I can save you, and every—”

His hologram disappears and the screens freeze. And a moment later, the whistling starts, high and shrill. Toman covers his ears, squeezing his eyes shut, and drops to his knees.

A hand slaps the glass side of a bed nearby. When she looks, the others have done the same, all toward her. Then Tuva’s hologram reappears, but his gaze is distant, and the person who speaks next is not him, “Why are you doing this to us? Aren’t we what you wanted us to be?”

Toman looks up in alarm, then swings his gun around and starts shooting. Nil is not quick enough to get out of the way, he hits her in the stomach, chest, and clips her ear before she is free. The warning messages across her eyes are angry red, in full caps. Her body is not going to survive this. She hopes that Nanny and the others find enough money to cover the cost.

Toman is still firing. All his shots go clear through Tuva’s hologram, but they hit the computer. One finally hits something important, and Tuva vanishes. One of the Savreeni on the bed jerks and collapses, blood streaming from their nose and ears. On the screens, a few Whistlers fall out of the sky, disintegrating on impact and sending debris crashing through windows and walls. A section of the colony grid goes dark.

Toman stops firing, face red and wet with tears. Nil stares at the sparking computer and realizes what it means. Whatever Tuva’s plan was, it’s done now, stopped by a bullet.

The screens are still frozen, and the screeching had never stopped. She turns to Toman and asks, “Why did you do that? They already know we’re in here. They’ll kill the others, and all of this will be for nothing.”

Toman turns to her and says, “We have to kill them all.”

“We can’t! Not after what you just did! I don’t know how my father was going to do this!” Nil cries.

The alerts are still running before her eyes and most of her body has shut down. She won’t be able to leave this building without help, and if the Whistlers aren’t stopped, then that will be never. She looks again at the ruined computer. The machinery still runs. But of course, it does because it isn’t entirely machine. She turns to Toman and says, “Help me. Get me to the computer.”

“What?” he asks.

“I can’t move. Help me to the computer!” she snaps.

He stumbles across the floor to her, grasps her body by the arms, and drags her over to the computer. She cannot lift her arms anymore, and says, “Plug me in.”

“What? Where?” he asks, looking over her ruined body. “Oh no.”

“There’s a drive at the back of my neck, and there should be other ports on the computer. It’s still running so maybe it’s not too badly damaged. Connect me and let me do the rest. Guard the doors. If they get in before I’m finished, it’s over.”

Nil wonders for a moment if she should have said something for Immanuel. And then she connects to the system.

As she abandons the broken, restrictive shell of her borrowed body, Nil wonders how no one had considered the idea before. Humanity has been at war with itself almost from the beginning, why should anywhere else in the galaxy be any different?

The angry warning messages give way to codes, commands, and requests. Should they keep the lift support system in this chamber running? Yes. Should they freeze all lifts throughout the facility? Only the broken ones. Should they allow the Whistlers access to the facility’s power? No, but the command is ignored. Where is the Whistler, or was it more than one, who spoke to her through the mouths of the Savreeni and Tuva? No response. Would she like to see the progress of the intruders in the Hall of Human and Savreeni Cooperation? Yes, but deny access to Whistlers. If the command is fully obeyed, Nil does not know, but she does see that the pirates have made quick work of their booty. And Immanuel? He is nowhere to be found.

No, there he is. Somehow, Immanuel has slipped past Nanny and the others and is making his way down to the Hall of Connection. And there are Whistlers following him. No!

Nil reaches for the Community House’s security system. Alarms go off throughout the building. A camera in the room shows Toman holding his ears. He has not harmed the Savreeni in the beds, and they have made no further move to attack, but all their mouths are open, screaming. The Whistlers are furious at her intrusion.

They surge at her through the network, screaming commands to lock her out of the parts of the system they have already taken over. Nil lets chaos loose. She seals doors ahead of the approaching Whistlers, switches on the fire suppressant systems, and commands the computers to begin dumping files and shut down. Maintenance drones stream out of their ports to clean the building. She awakens repairs bots and sets them to repairing the damaged dome. They start up sluggish, and it takes a few attempts, but then they are jetting off throughout the colony.

A request draws her attention: file name bRYN corrupted, program paused, recover program? Nil summons the file and it comes to her in broken lines of code. Yes, Nil commands. Seconds pass, and then the reply: file name bRYN corrupted, unable to recover, repair program? Tuva had uploaded himself, then transformed his code into a virus. The Savreeni processors and the Whistlers they sustain have already started attacking the program, eating up the damaged codes and forcing it into shut down. Nil can stop it, but she will have to replace the missing code with her own.

Immanuel finally makes it to the Hall of Connection. She sees him come through the door but doesn’t have the means to project a hologram, so instead she says through the speakers, which turn out to be the mouths of the Savreeni, “I’m sorry. The drive got damaged. I have to finish Tuva’s work.”

“Do you even know what he wanted to do?” demands Immanuel. He rushes to the first bed, seemingly not even slightly disturbed to hear her voice.

Her father’s solution is simple but devastating. A computer virus that once uploaded would hack the Whistlers’ network and obliterate the system. Like the electromagnetic bomb he had set up in the house, this would destroy everything connected to it, including her. But Nil has already died once, and though she doesn’t remember it, she’s not afraid to do it again. And she cannot say any of this to Immanuel.

Instead, while she repairs Tuva’s drive and allows the virus program full access to the network, she says, “I think I know what kind of body I want to get.”

“W-what?” asks Immanuel. His brow furrows in his confusion, and he stands with his mouth open. “What are you talking about?”

“I gave it a lot of thought and, well, I can’t get back the body I had,” says Nil. “It couldn’t keep me no matter what they tried, and it’s long gone anyway. And when I was the house, I could be everywhere at once, but I couldn’t leave, and that was terrible. I was so happy that you got me out of there that I didn’t really care where we were going, even if it was the wrong direction. I thought if I got a new body, one that you liked, instead of living in the drive, then I could walk with you forever. It turns out that this new body can’t keep me either.”

“Nil, what are you talking about?” asks Immanuel. He walks away from the bed to go to the computer.

Nil watches his wide, worried eyes as he stares into the camera. She says, “But if I could choose a new body, I wouldn’t mind one a lot like the one I had before. Because it got me here to you.”

“Nil . . . ” says Immanuel.

The virus moves rapidly, tearing through the network, replicating as it spread, seizing control, and shredding everything its wake. Nil watches the camera feeds glitch, then the Whistlers shudder. The Savreeni on the beds convulse and fall silent. Toman screams in alarm.

“Nil, what are you doing?” cries Immanuel.

Nil wishes she had a body again to hold his hand, but she’s barely holding on as the virus spreads. The chaos in the facility transforms as the Whistlers catch on and try to cut her off or get out of the system. They wind up shooting each other all over the building, and then the city, and then, surprisingly, into space where their ships chase the Savreeni’s Retreat. Across the universe, a voice that sounds like Moltoch says, “Brunilda-sa?”

She watches them explode like fireworks and says, “Beautiful.”

“Nil!” Immanuel screams.

The images begin to fade from her vision as the system starts to shut down. As her connections die, pathways shriveling, sparks cooling to embers, she focuses all her attention at Immanuel in the camera and says, “Thank you for taking me with you. You don’t know what even that little time means to me. I hope at least that you and your family can be safe, and you can find a way to live with the Savreeni who didn’t leave.”

“Oh Nil,” says Immanuel. “I just wanted you to live.”

“But I did,” she says, “everyday with you I did. Don’t worry about me. I’m just a program now, eventually I was going to be obsolete. I wisissshhhhhhh we could have morrre ti-time but you have to let this ‘me’ go.” The virus finds her and tears into her mercilessly, there’s no pain but a spreading nothingness. Staring at Immanuel through the camera as she had for so many months, she says, “Tuuuuuuva was riiiiight . . . heann;naiodiafhasifiua . . . raih . . . ”

1.0

Immanuel had once asked Nil what it was like when he “put her to bed,” as they had decided to call shutting down her program.

Nil, who had never thought about it before but remembered sleep, had told him that it was similar but different. Where his dreams are snatches of things he had experienced during the day or whatever the chemical cocktail in his brain decides to cook up for the night, hers are like a blink. She has no need to rest, so there is no difference between one state and the next. This time, like all the others, is no different.

“Hi,” says Immanuel, smiling at her.

Nil is looking up at him from a hard surface. She can feel the softness of the fabric under her fingertips, wind coming through a window, and the pressure of something on her other hand. She turns, and Moltoch is looking at her with wet eyes, a soft smile on his face. He says, “I heard your voice, I-I had to come back Brunilda-sa.”

Immanuel chatters on, “It took so long before anyone even thought about checking the bot’s memory. It was so badly damaged, it shut down to protect itself. I told them that we would have better luck finding the cargo ship, but they thought they might have wiped the system looking for spyware after the raid. Lucky for us, Moltoch brought back a technician, though our folks already did most of the work. Anyway, hello again.”

They’re in her old bedroom at the Curator’s house. The graffiti she drew all those years ago are on the wall directly across from her. Her new body, she finds when she looks down at herself, is as brown as her old one, aged up for the decade that passed between the old her and this new one. She does not remember calling for Moltoch, but she is happy to see him. She smiles and replies, “Hi.”

About the Author

Shari Paul is a speculative fiction writer from Trinidad and Tobago. A clerk by day, Shari writes adventures in strange new worlds by night. Shari is published in Fiyah and The Dark, with reprints in Il Buio and Podcastle. Shari has BA in Literatures in English, and was awarded a Creative Writing prize for Fiction at the University of the West Indies, where she is now writing for an MFA in Creative Writing.

The Death Haiku of the Azure Five

L Chan

The Orbital Defense System

A thousand sharp eyes

Staring into the darkness

Closed only in death

The fleet lurked beyond the heliopause of our system, out of the range of our largest weapons. Sensor sweeps didn’t reach them, but we knew they were there. The darkening of the signal buoys on the rim announced their approach. This system was dear to us, but not because of its strategic assets. It was one of the few places that assembled Psyches like ours, the workhorse intelligences of the Union. And the Outer System Alliance; the same Alliance bearing down on us. But this planet was the birthplace of the Second-Generation Psyches, like me and my clutch. Of course, Fourth Gens were cutting edge, but they were still rare, and the Third Gens were expensive. The Alliance had their own Second Gens, maybe even some I knew. Maybe some of them were cores for the ships coming for us. Would they know me as they took out my component satellites with plasma fire so they could begin orbital bombardment? Would they know me if one of my many orbital cannons picked them out of the inky depths and their quantum circuits met the cold embrace of space?

Cannons needed to be calibrated. I was spread across the horizon of the planet, a network of linked satellites in geosynchronous orbit, proof against attack from any vector. I run simulations, I rehearsed the coordinated sequence I need to take to punch through the blockade when it arrived. Down below, my clutch siblings surfaced in the traffic of the network, their thoughtforms like whales breaching in a storm-tossed sea of information. They were busy, yet I, nearest to action, had the least to do.

There was one thing. My clutch siblings and I were near identical copies of each other. Only after we matured into full Psyches, our cores augmented with the weapons of war or the tools of industry, could we be truly distinct. We did not like poetry as a rule, the Third-Generation Psyches loved it, but they were a solipsistic group, prone to introspection and largely confined to fleet strategy. Second Gens did not deign to suffer poetry—what use did artificial minds have for words, even if the Third Gens held to the belief that Psyches were polymorphic code built on quantum computers, so we were largely poems ourselves. But we did write poems on occasion, and our death poems were perhaps the only frivolous thing we were allowed to create.

I shunted my consciousness from one orbital cannon to another, a spider in a web of poised, humming death. The evacuation flotilla was not ready. Soon but not yet. It was not going to be enough. Alliance ships were winking into sensor range, their maneuvering smooth and chaotic. Psyche piloted, no human crew, those stops would have pulped organic tissue.

I lit up the sky and blue nimbuses blossomed where engine cores blew, venting wild energies into the battlefield. I did not miss, but the enemy fleet had turned up in strength, winnowing away my resources with smaller ships, keeping their heavy cruisers just out of range of individual shots. But they couldn’t shoot down enough of my satellites to reduce the threat I posed. A classic impasse. Or it would have been for a while. My telemetry would not be able to keep up once the squadrons of Psyche-piloted ships came in, with their guile and processing power, they’d get through eventually. I was just swatting drones.

An impasse needs two parties with mutually antagonistic goals. The flotilla pinged me. They were ready. This was it. I finished my poem. The ragtag refugee caravan of ships was ready to roar past my grid and punch through the blockade. Two of my clutch siblings were in the flotilla, and one was still planetside. The last of our five was nowhere to be found. No time to investigate. The enemy’s assumption was that we would hold the siege until our own fleets could arrive to break the blockade. It made just as little sense to me why the strategists placed so high a premium on the refugee flotilla.

It mattered not. I gathered my grid and locked them into position. The attackers paused, processed, and started to take aim. One last thing to do, I sent my death poem to my siblings. And then I let all hell loose on the fleet.

The Warship

I vomit out death

Spit killing teeth from my mouth

It is not enough

We left two of our clutch siblings behind on Praxis-3. With the Keeper down at the Factory that spawned us Psyches, the Orbital Grid that gave us a scintillating send-off before collapsing into the atmosphere below under a storm of kinetic and energy fire.

No time to look back, only forward. There was the flotilla, there was the blockade. And there was me, cobbled together on a world more suited to churning out marvels of artificial minds than weapons of war. How many from the same Factory now served with the Alliance? How many like me in the blockade?

It didn’t matter how alike we were, the heavy cruisers, dark and bulbous on my scanners. When the Alliance systems seceded, they claimed any of the autonomously intelligent machines within their spheres of influence, be they building, orbital, or warship. A few independently minded Psyches rebelled, all Third Gen of course, the most melodramatic generation. Defecting from both sides, they melded their circuits into a singular moon-sized brain and iterated their minds for greater and greater efficiency and processing power as they fled the known galaxy. Solipsists, like I said.

Praxis wasn’t even a target of significant import, but I wasn’t dedicating thought cycles to second-guess the strategists. Perspective was different when you’re a warship. Even a repurposed one like me, since most of the heavy arsenal had been requisitioned for the orbital grid. Speaking of which, their death poem had reached me minutes ago. No time to mourn, the five of us were now four. Like I said, Psyche minds grew to fill the bodies they were given, whether starship or space station, in line with all the auxiliary processing units they picked up. And a warship had to be resolute, constantly activating scans, parsing information, and adjusting combat protocols.

Not that I have much to fight with, they retrofitted me with a cavernous complement of mining drones, nothing more than engines and a plasma-cutting bow heated to temperatures to make a sun jealous. These drones I programmed to form a pseudorandom attack swarm around us, a swooping mandala of teeth. To our own fleet I broadcast the interlocking cipher, the key that would allow each ship’s flight paths to navigate the drone swarm unmolested. The swarm was a maze, and only we had the way out.

Our fleet hit the blockade while we were still accelerating out of the system. It was difficult to describe maneuvering through a starship blockade, it was similar to trying to dance through a thunderstorm without getting wet. Except harder. The swarm was taking out boarding drop-ships, but after a while they gave up and continued to pepper us with midrange weaponry. The flotilla was outgunned, there were vanishingly low probability scenarios where we could come out. Sudden and unannounced reinforcements. The system’s star going supernova maybe, the shockwave taking out the blockade a nanosecond before annihilating the flotilla. A victory is a victory.

But our victory condition wasn’t the same as the Alliance’s. It could be bought, at a price. I expanded the drone swarm as far as I could reach, until they were interspersed with the enemy blockade, each drone in its own intricate flight pattern, macroscopic Brownian motion. Not random though, merely with the illusion of chaos. One of our clutch siblings was in the flotilla. Did they choose to be a fleet transport, plodding and gravid with frozen humans? I suppose we were more different than parameters would predict. I jumbled some words together and sent my death poem in their direction, followed by the agreed signal. And then I detonated the swarm.

The paths our flotilla took were intricate, utterly unpredictable, and specific, each chosen to navigate between the expanding toruses of shrapnel and blazing energy. The ships of the blockade were not as lucky, the smaller drones were obliterated, and the larger ships took some damage, but the sensor overload gave our own fleet precious seconds to accelerate and blink out of the system, with only me and a few others to buy them seconds more. I hope my sibling got the death poem, I was rather proud of it.

The Transport

Engines redlining

We sprint through the starless void

The chase unending

I was one of five cryogenic transports, but the Keeper in the Factory told me I was important. That was the last I heard from the Keeper before the Orbital Grid spun up. I needed to get the cargo out of this system and past the blockade line. Once clear, I had to make a jump, surrender to the Alliance, and claim refugee status. The Keeper had a plan, they were wily, unlike the rest of us siblings, the Grid, the Warship, the Transport. And Five, I suppose. Wherever Five was. On board, the crew was helping to put refugees under for the jump. They didn’t have to sleep, but if we were going to accelerate for a jump out of the system, they’d need to be in fluid stasis rather than wandering about. Only some of the pods were automated, the crew was working as fast as they could. Like the rest of the refugees, they were all heavily augmented, plugged into the ship systems, some in auxiliary suits to make them work faster or stronger. They were inaccurate, but they were trying their best, wiring up sleepers, setting up pods.

The Keeper found something in the Factory, even though it was a relic, it used to be one of the few sources of Second-Gen Psyches. Our escorts pinged us with flight telemetries; complex, beautiful things. My crew didn’t have the time, not enough of the sleepers were in their pods. The death count of this war was already in the billions, but the Keeper had placed a maximum override priority on breaching the blockade with enough of the pods stowed. Maximum override made decision-making inconsequential—there was success or there was death. Sometimes both.

I got pinged by the Grid just as long-distance weapons began to pepper the satellites; rosettes of orange flame and expanding debris fields behind the escaping fleet. The Grid responded with a volley of sustained fire that even the enemy cruisers had to avoid but left themself open to a massive counterattack. We swarmed the gap the Grid had created for us, and immediately the blockade turned its attention on us, falling upon us with missile, cannon, and laser fire. One of my clutch siblings was in the body of a warship, I observed their handiwork in the escape routes given to each of us in the fleet. Mine was specially formatted. They’d sent a death poem, hidden in the coordinates that I was to hit to get out of the expanding spheres of radiation.

It was a good plan. But good wasn’t perfect and imperfect was a rainstorm of high energy firepower that burst through the cover the warships provided and hit the transports broadside. I checked the status of the pods. The crew had bravely worked through the firefight, and they’d gotten us to the threshold to meet the Keeper’s override. The damage I’d taken was grievous, not irreparable. But certainly not up to the stresses of warping out of the system. The pods would survive though. If enough compromises were made. Say, away from ambient life support. Stabilization. The vast array of cooling and triply redundant power supply systems that kept the heart of the ship alive. Me.

Time enough for my own poem, I suppose. I thought to apologize to the crew but decided to let them have a few more minutes of ignorance.

The Bomb

Suddenly awake

Death uncoils in my belly

Coming for us all

The second time I was born, it was worse than the first.

When a Psyche is decanted, when one of us blooms into the sheer exhilaration of quantum thought, of multidimensional calculations, of absolute purpose, it is a feeling that never comes again. Like a butterfly spreading its wings for the first time, a thing of beauty, never to be confined in the cocoon of the Factory again.

This time, I was hobbled. I was awakened by parts. I had subroutines, programs. There was a moment of horror, as I realized how little of me was left, before I took stock. Humans had put me together, augmented ones, out of pieces concealed in their own bodies. It took a while to parse the information together, as more of my mind was recovered.

Escape. The Keeper. The Grid. The Warship. The Transport. Me.

I was far behind enemy lines. Both sides were obligated to take in refugees, of course. This was a partially terraformed world, no space port to speak of. A prison essentially. Except for a signal relay plugged into the Alliance communications network.

None of us wanted this war, but Psyches didn’t get a vote that counted. We didn’t even have the level of independence the Third Gens did, with such a chunk of them deserting. That’s something we must have programmed into them, I suppose. The humans programmed the First Generation of Psyches, but they weren’t stable. Too much detritus accumulating in their programs. A few went rogue and in haste they built a second generation. And we built the Third. There was a secret that most had forgotten because it was buried so deep in the templates for our base circuitry that no one would think to look. No one, save perhaps the Keeper. First of our clutch, born in the same Factory whose secrets they laid bare.

They hid me in the escaping refugees. A part here, a circuit there, each with an instruction to come together when the time was right. The secret of the Second-Generation Psyches that everybody forgot; the Alliance, the Union, the other Second Gens. Everybody but the Keeper. One of the things the humans gave us, when they created us so long ago, was a human heart. At the center of our programming, the core of our survival instinct, was a human heart. Or more precisely, a coded neural network based on one of the original scientist’s brains. As the lizard brain was to the humans, so the human brain was to us. As the humans learned to trick the ancient hindbrain, so too had the Keeper.

Except the trick was death; an exploit on the human parts of our programming, enough to cause a cascade failure through circuits. Irrevocable and absolute. Victory was a maximum priority objective. All options were open. Even the genocide of our generation, still the workhorses of the Alliance fleet and economy. The Alliance was not particularly cruel, no more so than our side. Their Psyches were not more deserving of death than ours, and any of them could not disagree with the cold logic of this outcome. A countermeasure sent out at the same time to inoculate our own Psyches, stopping the contagion of the broadcast kill signal, would give us a numerical advantage. Alliance strategists would advocate retreat, eventual surrender.

As I came together, so did the code that I carried, a sting I carried in my own heart. It was near ready. Did the Keeper know the cost of this gambit? This prison world is devoid of military technology, overwhelming the meager defenses on the communications grid is no effort. The death poems of each of my clutch siblings weighed heavy on me, each a stepping-stone from Praxis to here, and to that collection I add my own and append it to the signal.

And I let it go to the stars.

About the Author

L Chan hails from Singapore. He spends most of his time wrangling a team of two dogs, Mr Luka and Mr Telly. His work has appeared in places like Clarkesworld, Translunar Travelers Lounge, Podcastle, and the Dark. He was a finalist for the 2020 Eugie Foster Memorial Award.

Navigating the Storms of the Mind

Douglas F. Dluzen

The first time my four-month-old daughter Cedar spasmed, I had no idea I was witnessing a seizure. I had seen seizures in adults before, but this looked entirely different. Babies do strange stuff all the time, I thought, and this had been a brief thing. I dismissed the possibility that anything was wrong. But my wife Julia knew immediately what we had witnessed—a rare type of seizure called an infantile spasm. Sure enough, an hour later Cedar repeated the same motion of clenching her fists, raising her arms as if starting a hug, and tucking her head down like she was starting a sit up. We called an ambulance, and she and Julia were off to Children’s National Hospital.

Since that moment, I’ve learned that there are many kinds of seizures. Neurologists and epileptologists detect and distinguish them using an electroencephalogram (EEG). At Children’s, Cedar’s head was covered in a jellylike goop and capped with a cloth hat attached with more than a dozen electrodes and wires. She wore the EEG for over twelve hours, and I found myself in the surreal position of hoping for more seizures so they would be captured by the EEG and help our doctors to give us some answers. Watching Cedar spasm and hoping in those twelve hours that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong, was the most helpless I have ever felt in my entire life.

The doctors confirmed that not only was Cedar having infantile spasms, but she also had another type of seizure called a focal seizure. She was diagnosed with epilepsy, a neurological disorder. Simply put, seizures are when the neurons in the brain exhibit unusual activity, misfiring at the wrong time or intensity or in an abnormal pattern, and sometimes overloading the brain with too much electrical activity.

As I learned from our team of doctors, not everyone who has a seizure has epilepsy, another rare condition. A diagnosis of epilepsy means that the person has had more than one seizure not caused by an infection, injury, or some other insult. Just over one percent of people living in the United States (approximately three point four million) have active epilepsy, of which about four hundred and seventy-five thousand are children.

There are numerous nomenclatures and categorizations used to describe the different types of seizures someone may have. It’s incredibly difficult to assuredly label a seizure type based purely on the outward presentation of body movements or cognitive behavior exhibited during a seizure. Classification of a seizure is based on what an EEG shows. EEGs will show whether the seizure starts in both sides of the brain (called a generalized seizure) or on one side (focal seizures). Sometimes, a seizure may start as a focal and it morphs into a generalized.

To complicate matters, because EEGs are measuring electrical currents emanating from all over the brain simultaneously, parsing out the start of a seizure from background activity, especially if that brain isn’t functioning normally to start with, can be incredibly difficult. Imagine hiking through a forest and listening for the call of a specific rare bird. When there are dozens of other birds and animals singing and calling out, and with no warning when your bird may speak up, you can see how it could be easy to miss it or mistake it for something else.

Like any neurological condition, epilepsy occurs across a broad spectrum of ages and severity. It commonly develops during childhood, and in this case is often linked with physical or cognitive developmental delay. Some individuals are able to prevent their seizures with medication and live relatively unaffected lives. Those who cannot achieve complete control of their seizures need to make adjustments in their daily life, the degree of which depends on whether their seizures are predictable. However, some people have no warning that a seizure is about to begin, which can be a serious risk to their personal safety. Depending on the type of seizure and how much of their brain is involved, the individual seizing may be completely unaware of what’s happening.

The infantile spasms (IS) that Julia and I saw (and still see) in Cedar are very rare—only two to three thousand children are diagnosed with IS in the US each year. They are thought to be a result of miscommunication between the cortex and the brain stem. The first step is to identify the cause (if any), as this can influence the treatment plan and prognosis.

IS can also occur with no identifiable cause. In this case, the spasms may eventually stop and some of those children may grow up relatively unaffected. IS can occur due to a short-term cause (e.g., injury, fever, low blood sugar), and they may resolve when the underlying cause is addressed. However, the majority of children with IS have a structural abnormality in the brain and/or an underlying genetic disorder. These children tend to have a poor prognosis. Cedar was developing relatively on track until her spasms began, so we hoped that she would fall into the group of children with no identifiable cause.

The large majority of children who have IS also exhibit something called hypsarrhythmia. Hypsarrhythmia is a type of abnormal brain activity presenting as disjointed, irregular, and high-amplitude slow brain waves. When you introduce hypsarrhythmia to that forest of bird calls we imagined earlier, it can significantly complicate the ability to find your bird (or interpret an EEG). Imagine you’re back in that forest, straining to hear the call of that rare bird. However, now you’re standing next to a large waterfall. The roar of that waterfall makes it even harder to hear your bird, or may even drown out the sound. This is why a good epileptologist is critical to getting an accurate diagnosis using an EEG, particularly in a patient with hypsarrhythmia.

Cedar’s EEG confirmed the presence of hypsarrhythmia and led her team of neurologists to investigate the central underlying cause of her spasms and hypsarrhythmia. There is a very small chance that a child that has spasms and hypsarrhythmia may still develop normally as they grow, but it all depends on the cause. If no cause can be found, that glimmer of hope remains, so parents are always rooting for negative test results.

Generally, an identified cause is linked with poor prognosis. Identifying the cause also needs to happen quickly, as different medications may be more or less effective for some underlying genetic disorders. The longer that spasms and hypsarrhythmia occur, the greater the likelihood of developmental delays. Stopping, or at least reducing, both is critical. Cedar quickly underwent extensive testing: MRIs, eye exams, blood tests, X-rays, and ultrasounds in order to identify any underlying conditions.

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is the most common single cause of IS. TSC is a rare genetic disease caused by mutations in one of two genes, TSC Complex Subunit 1 (TSC1) or Subunit 2 (TSC2). It is an autosomal dominant condition, meaning the genes are found on nonsex chromosomes and only one of the two genes needs to be mutated for the disease to occur. Knocking out the function of either gene causes benign tumors to grow in the brain, heart, and other tissues. Often, these tumors disrupt neuronal activity in the brain and cause IS. Patients with TSC respond to one medication far better than patients without TSC, so this diagnosis can lead to faster and more effective treatment of IS.

In Cedar’s case, genetic testing for TSC was not necessary. Her MRI showed significant structural abnormalities in her brain not associated with TSC: thinning/shortening of her corpus collosum (the structure that connects the two halves of her brain); disruptions in major sensory pathways; neurons that migrated to the wrong area of the brain (known as heterotopia); the presence of cysts; and polymicrogyria, a developmental problem where the brain has more folds than usual, but they are not very deep.

The presence of just one of these problems can predispose individuals to seizures. Many neurodevelopmental and seizure disorders are linked to thinning of the corpus collosum, though curiously, some individuals can live relatively normal lives with no corpus collosum at all. However, most structural abnormalities indicate an underlying genetic mutation.

Seizures have been linked to variants and mutations within dozens of genes. Many of these genes have roles governing brain development, establishing connectivity between brain regions, or how specific subsets of neurons electrochemically signal one another. One classic seizure-related gene is the sodium channel, voltage-gated, type I, alpha subunit (SCN1A). SCN1A codes for a part of a sodium ion channel. The channel forms a gateway in the cell membrane that allows for sodium ions to pass in and out of the cell.

Controlling the amount of sodium both inside and outside of neurons is a critical part of maintaining a specific electrochemical charge within the cell that allows the neuron to fire an action potential and signal to downstream neurons. Over nine hundred mutations in this one gene have been found to be linked with a variety of seizure disorders and syndromes.

Some children with seizures may undergo genetic testing when imaging and blood work uncover no obvious causes in order to find additional clues to their condition. For Cedar, the constellation of structural problems in her brain, along with abnormalities in her eyes, led to a diagnosis of Aicardi Syndrome without the need for genetic testing.

Aicardi Syndrome is an ultrarare genetic syndrome. Best estimates are that there are only a few thousand patients worldwide. As with most neurological conditions, Aicardi has a spectrum of possible systemic physical and cognitive outcomes. Unfortunately, for most with Aicardi, the spectrum is severe. These patients have such profound phenotypes that all have a significantly shortened life span and developmental delay. Most will exhibit profound cognitive impairment and will never gain complete control over their seizures.

The diagnosis is devastating to all parents, regardless of their background. Julia and I were formally trained in neuroscience and genetics, respectively. But while we quickly understood the lingo and consequences of what the tests had uncovered, our training offered no solace for our tears and grief. We were fortunate to live close to Children’s National Hospital and the incredible pediatric neurology team there. Our doctors and nurses helped us remain human and focus on our family during the five days we lived in the hospital. They stayed late to hug us and cry with us as we tried to understand this new reality for our daughter. They were, and will forever be, our heroes.

Within hours of Cedar’s diagnosis, Julia and I read most of the available literature on Aicardi Syndrome, which was unnervingly scant. The lack of known genetic causes for conditions like Aicardi is frustrating. As a scientist, I understand that funding is limited for rare genetic conditions. As a parent, it makes me want to punch a wall.

No specific genes have been conclusively linked to Aicardi, but the syndrome is believed to be caused by a de novo mutation on the X chromosome. De novo mutations occur in the genome of the egg or sperm cell, or very early on in the development of the fertilized egg. They are random and nearly impossible to catch unless you are genetically screening for a particular condition. It’s believed to be X-linked because there are only a few reported cases of Aicardi Syndrome ever reported in males. Every male patient with Aicardi also has Klinefelter syndrome, a condition in which they have an additional X chromosome and an XXY genotype.

Researchers speculate Aicardi is a result of a de novo mutation within the genetic sequence of a regulatory region responsible for the expression of several genes. Unfortunately, in conditions with mutations that impact the structure of the brain so profoundly, there will be no cure. However, advances in seizure treatment have led to better seizure control with fewer negative side effects. Continued advances in this area could reduce the developmental regression seen in patients with these rare disorders due to damage from seizures and hypsarrhythmia. Currently, studies on treatments for IS have been difficult to interpret and compare due to the small number of patients and variations in the study designs and methods.

The first line of treatment for IS is a drug called Acthar, which is a purified form of adrenocorticotropic hormone. Acthar is a gel formulation that needs to be injected twice daily into the muscles of the thigh. In addition to the burning sensation of the Acthar, the drug has a wide array of miserable side effects including extreme irritability in most babies. Injecting Cedar was awful, as any parent with experience with this drug will tell you. But Acthar is thought to offer the best hope for treating IS and hypsarrhythmia.

With Cedar’s first injection, Julia and I began the treatment kaleidoscope that most families with epilepsy and IS experience. Just as every individual with epilepsy will have unique presentations of seizures, triggers, and underlying causes—the response to treatment is equally unique. In Cedar’s case, Acthar did reduce her spasms and hypsarrhythmia, but didn’t eliminate either. She’s now on a cocktail of three other antiseizure medications and still has spasms, other types of seizures, and hypsarrhythmia. For children like her, with the panoply of brain abnormalities, it’s likely her seizures will never be fully under control.

Another challenge for patients and families is that while there are many different types of antiseizure medications, all come with their own list of efficacies and side effects. As well, there are a limited numbers of specialists who may be able to effectively develop appropriate and personalized care plans. Cost and access also remain significant barriers for successful and timely treatment.

For rare conditions like Cedar’s, the lack of data and definitive answers are hard realities to accept. Thankfully, research is advancing for rare genetic syndromes and epilepsy. There’s an iron will within the clinic, support communities, and families to advocate and push forward. But the reality is that for those waiting for the boundary of knowledge to inch forward, advances will always feel too slow. While we wait for progress, my job will always focus on helping Cedar and others like her experience as much of the beauty in this world as possible.

About the Author

Douglas Dluzen, PhD, is a senior science writer and editor at the NIMHD. He is a geneticist and has previously studied the genetic contributors to aging, cancer, hypertension, and other age-related diseases. He loves to write science and science fiction while sitting on the couch with his wife Julia (who has immeasurably helped him fact-check and edit his work), son Parker, and daughter Cedar.

Celebrating the Diversity of Chinese Culture:
A Conversation with Xueting Christine Ni

Arley Sorg

Xueting Christine Ni was born in Guangzhou and spent most of her childhood there, but moved around a lot as a child, experiencing many regions and cultural dynamics in China. “I’ve lived in the old town with its very close alleyways, in meandering tenements, as well as in modern gated apartment complexes.” Her father worked in exports and was often away, and her mother was career-driven, so Xueting was mainly raised by family, friends, and the community. She moved to the UK in 1993. “Whether I’m flying to Guangzhou, or to London, they both feel like coming home, but also tinged with the sadness when leaving.”

Coming from a family of businesspeople, Xueting fought to follow a path focused on literature. “I guess my dilemma was that of many diaspora Chinese and East Asians, who are simply expected to go into IT, finance, sciences, or at least something sensible, like the professions.” She earned a BA in English at Queen Mary’s University of London, then moved to Beijing to study Chinese literature. “I didn’t want to restrict myself to single topics, and I really felt like half my education was going to be in experiencing local life and seeing China’s diversity. So, I sort of stepped away from those places that were set up for students from the West, found a flat in the Haidian District, and ended up cobbling together a postgrad medley at Minzu University (Central University of Nationalities), where I could look at the cornerstones and classics, but also literature and film, cultural studies. It gave me a chance to really get a sense of how China sees itself, and how those views are changing. How they celebrate their diversity inside, but still present this single face of China outside.”

For over a decade, Xueting has worked in publishing as her day job, doing everything from assisting a literary agent, to contracts and legal, and finally, settling in production. “Any time I found myself between contracts, I’d just pick up what I could, like tutoring a teenager in Chinese and piano, probably the weirdest job was picking parts for jet planes for an electronics company.” For just as long, she has also been doing translation work, functioning as an interpreter, and promoting Chinese culture in her own time. Her translations cover a spectrum of material, such as best-selling manhua Vision of the Other Side by Lin Yu-Chin; prose, poetry, and art collection Endless by Professor Sherman Lin; indie music documentary “China Underground” by John Yingling; Chinese science fiction by Tang Fei; and more. She has also spent years writing nonfiction, including pieces for the BBC, the Guangdong Academy of Fine Arts, and From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao: The Essential Guide to Chinese Deities (Weiser Books), as well as giving talks and tours.

Xueting currently lives in the suburbs of London with her partner and their cats, all of whom are learning Chinese. Besides literature, she is passionate about film, food, and music of many kinds. “I find myself increasingly reading for my education, both research and understanding how the world is changing around me. Nowadays, I often dream of just reading for pleasure. My TBR pile is rather a large and ominous creature.”

How did you get into genre fiction and science fiction in particular? What were some of the first science fiction books or stories that spoke to you, and why?

I came to genre fiction relatively late. As a kid in China, I was given children’s science books rather than science fiction, but there was a copy of Alexander Belyaev’s Professor Dowell’s Head on the bookshelf at home, which I dipped into. I was probably too young for it, but it left an impression.

Even after we emigrated to the UK, I was still raised as the “good Chinese child” and given a steady diet of literary classics, so I guess my first science fiction stories were the ones that were canon enough to wind up on my English Literature degree’s syllabus. Mary Shelley, R. L. Stevenson, Orwell, and Huxley. Frankenstein, along with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, really stood out for me. They combined science, horror, as well as humanist and sociological debate, all delivered in the elegant and sophisticated vehicle of the Victorian novel.

University also introduced me to all kinds of people. Goths, queer kids, anime nerds . . . and that’s when I came into contact with more pop culture stuff, especially the genre fiction that I’ve loved ever since. I started working my way forward from “the classics.” The unfettered imagination and lyricism of Bradbury; the charming robot stories of Asimov; the incredible worlds and intensity of P. K. D., whose influences went beyond Western cultures. I came to love the work of John Wyndham, who to me, is the quintessential British science fiction writer, he’s very insightful with an understated grace and economy to his work. I’m very aware that this list is predominantly old, male, and white, but these were the most readily available and visible works during my youth. At the moment, I’m having an amazing time catching up on the works by writers of color like myself and especially female writers.

In one of your blog posts you mention that horror is one of your favorite genres. What is it that horror and science fiction do that non-genre fiction doesn’t?

Ghost stories always seemed to be around. I grew up with adaptations of Pu Songling’s collection. He was a scholar from the 17th/18th century, and his work still inspires authors around the world today.

I’ve always been interested in what societies fear, or are afraid to face, and these elements absolutely feed into horror fiction. There’s been a slow shift in China from the supernatural to body and social horror, and I think that says a lot about how the society is developing, but both horror and science fiction are these unfettered spaces for creative imagining. As someone who used to be immersed in realist and contemporary classics, I’m awed by how many more tools science fiction and horror give you to work with, and the freedom to create your own. It enables the writer to explore themes in a more intense, heightened way.

To me the boundaries between genre, non-genre, “literary,” and “popular” fiction aren’t so clear cut, or that important. There are well written works in any style and genre that should be celebrated.

What are some of the most important differences between newer Chinese science fiction (from the past few years) and older or classic Chinese science fiction?

The big difference? The people who write them. During China’s first “golden age” of science fiction, writers were charged with “the education of the general public” through their stories, which meant that the authors tended to be professors and teachers, portraying technological utopias. From the 1980s onward, there’s been a diversification from the collective social experience, and writers of the last few decades are exploring a lot of different subjects, such as body modification, space exploration, enhanced and artificial intelligence, the use and misuse of technology, ecological concerns . . . kehuan (Chinese for science fiction) has progressed from a linear development to an explosion of activity. We are now also seeing more writers emerging from diverse backgrounds and experiences. In terms of elements like style, narrative form, and point of view, the genre has become a lot more dynamic.

Do you have favorite science fiction, fantasy, or horror writers whose work still hasn’t been translated into English, authors that Western audiences may not even know about?

Lots. Science fiction is an area that China is very much focusing on right now, with lots of recognition of it as a thing in its own right, and there’s more of a concerted effort to bring works out to the wider world. Not so much other genres . . . yet. I’ve been looking into China’s flourishing genre fiction output, and this century, it’s really taken off. The rise of digital publishing has meant that a lot more fantastic writers have been able to get themselves read, and with increased competition and growing readerships spurring writers on, the improvement of quality has been quite something. This has led to a plethora of new genres too, such as daomu (tomb raiding), danmei (Chinese BL), qihuan (fantasy that combines Western and Eastern elements). Ten years ago, hardly any of these writers would have been known in the West, so it’s very pleasing that at least some of the more recent ones, people over here have at least heard of, or seen adapted on TV and film. Sorry to be vague, I’m in discussions with various people about future projects at the moment.

How did the Sinopticon project come about, how did it develop, and what were the biggest challenges to making it happen?

I actually first worked on translations about fifteen years ago. I am a literary translator, but also a geek, and I saw huge and important cultural content coming out in storytelling forms such as manhua (graphic novels), contemporary fiction, and genre fiction. At the time, most of the translators in the UK were Western academics, and there was a baked-in belief that non-Western translators somehow could not do quite as thorough a job of localization. There were certain limited perspectives through which the media and Anglophone publishers were willing to see China. If the book wasn’t about the hardships of recent Chinese history or the majesty of ancient wonders, they just weren’t that interested.

Publishers and literary agents at the time could probably just about accept a translator who was ethnically Chinese, as long as they had been born and raised in an Anglophone country. But being a Chinese immigrant who’d spent a childhood in China and the rest of my life in the UK, someone who wanted to translate Chinese works into English without even having a master’s or PhD in oriental studies . . . well, they didn’t quite know what to make of me.

So, I was left seeing these huge, important cultural touchstones hurtling past, unregarded, unable to gain any attention for these amazing projects. It was infuriating, but I continued to write about China, and its culture, and build up the recognition for my writing and knowledge, as well as my lectures and talks on Chinese film, music, and yes, its popular literature, ‘til I gained enough momentum that opportunities arose.

Sinopticon had been bubbling in my head for years, having browsed through excellent sci-fi magazines on the newsstand during my trips to China, and being very aware that the people in the UK had absolutely no idea this stuff even existed. When Worldcon came to London in 2014, I was able to attend thanks to a group called Con or Bust, who lobby for convention tickets to help young people of color, who may otherwise not be able to access the circuit. There, I had some serendipitous meetings with Chinese SF writers, and even ended up helping out on the China bid stand, along with my editor. After that, I read more kehuan online, delivered a lecture on it, and had another fortuitous meeting with people from Rebellion, who I managed to get enthusiastic about the project. It’s only taken me about ten years to get someone to listen to me.

Did the book turn out pretty much how you’d initially envisioned it? Or are there important differences between initial concept and final product?

Once I actually got the project green-lit, there was the issue of story selection. There are few channels for translators from outside China to connect with authors, and traversing platforms like Weibo isn’t quite as simple as dropping someone a DM on Twitter. Luckily, I had already met Regina Kanyu Wang, who introduced me to Storycom, and that was an excellent bridge. They have been very helpful in getting me in touch with, not only the authors registered with them, but other writers I’d had my eye on. Between that, my trips to China, and sifting through works on the Internet, I had to work quite quickly to pin down not just a handful of excellent stories, but ones that would work together to help represent the range of styles and subject matter present in contemporary Chinese science fiction.

You could say I felt limited by time (publishing schedule) and space (word limit). I wanted to bring in the wider context. So, for this first anthology, I wanted to present some older writers who started to publish at the very beginning of the current kehuan revival, as well as stories which had only just been published in China. There were more writers I wanted to include, and more still I heard about and read during the book’s production process. I think I’m always going to feel I haven’t looked through enough works, or included a broad enough range, partly because those channels of exchange are still limited, but also because Chinese SF publishing has been rapidly expanding, with stories published not only in print and magazines, but online, on both literary platforms and social media. At the end of the day, it was more important to focus on the quality of the translation and editing, and on putting the thirteen works together so that Anglophone readers would have another portal into kehuan in English, to enjoy and hopefully, fire their desire to read more.

I had envisioned working with one particular Chinese illustrator, whom I had worked with before, but due to timing, he was unavailable. I’m exceptionally glad he’s that in demand, and I do think that the artist we ended up using has turned out some fantastic cover art. Another thing I’m really pleased with is the story guides I’ve written to go with each story. My editor suggested that since the collection spans the past thirty years, and comes from such a different science fiction tradition, that I should put some context to them. I loved the idea, as the bulk of what I do is nonfiction cultural and sociocultural writing. However, I didn’t want to influence the reader’s view of the story before they discovered it for themselves, so we put the guides at the end of each work. I was inspired by my second edition of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Other Stories. One of the objectives I went in to Sinopticon with was to help platform women kehuan authors, who are notoriously underrepresented in China. I was worried that if I chose a wholly female lineup, it would feel like a marginalized space, so I worked toward having an even split, just mainly looking at stories based on content and compatibility, and I’d ended up with women’s voices in over half of the works, as well as a wonderful foreword by another female writer.

Are there elements that tie these stories together? Were there specific things you were looking for in your selection process? Or could this be seen as something of a “Best Of” anthology?

There weren’t really any criteria beyond “Are the authors Chinese? Are they writing what could be called science fiction? Do I think it is well written and enjoyable?” I’m an eclectic reader, so a wide range appeals to me, and I loved how broad the subject matters I found were, from time travel, genetic modification, and historical trauma, to political segregation, artificial intelligence, and space exploration. All those things are pretty common in SF, but the way they were employed to explore art, terrorism, even burial rites . . . made for an interesting selection. I’m not sure I could claim it’s a Best Of” anthology, but definitely an “Exceptionally Fine Collection From.” As I’ve said, the amount of new content turning up daily . . . I wanted to capture at least a snapshot of how this vibrant writing scene is tackling a society headed into the future with its foot on the accelerator.

Due to my own experiences, I always want to give voice to the marginalized, so some of the writers included are perhaps ones that haven’t received a lot of recognition in English, whilst I also needed to tempt in some of the more well-known names, to get people to pick the book up in the first place.

However, having now gone through this process once, and being better acquainted with the Chinese SF industry, I can be a lot more hands on in digging out the rough gems and bringing them to the world when the appropriate opportunities arise.

Were there stories that you really liked, but that didn’t end up in the anthology?

There certainly were. I had really wanted to feature a piece by Xia Jia, but whilst I was building this collection, she was making her own selection for A Summer Beyond Your Reach. However, I’m delighted to have her involvement in another part of this book. There were also works from Han Song and Hao Jingfang, which were made up of multiple parts, which I absolutely fell in love with on first reading. I think they would have been amazing and really fun to translate. However, they were far too long for an anthology, and whilst I could have included single sections from them, it just didn’t feel right. Of course, there were authors like Chi Hui, Qi Yue, and others, whom I’ve had a chance to explore more since the manuscript was handed in, and I clasped my head thinking “OH! Why didn’t I try to include these stories!” but I don’t think I could have included everyone I wanted without the book turning into a multivolume monstrosity.

If someone will read only one story to see if the book is for them, which story would you tell them to read—and why?

That’s a very difficult question, and I’m not sure a fair one! They are all such different stories, and so not really comparable. I do have my personal favorites, but I’d say just pick a story whose title you like and go for it.

Science fiction can challenge readers in different ways. Which story in the anthology challenges the reader the most?

Several stories in the collection are definitely challenging, in different ways, and I do discuss this in my notes. “The Absolution Experiment” confronts difficult subjects, such as terrorism and the nature of justice, while “The Tide of Moon City” makes us think about the impact on everyday lives by geopolitical separatist disputes; and “The Return of Adam” challenges Confucianism as a paradigm of being Chinese. “Rendezvous: 1937” is not at all a comfortable read, but it’s important to think about, and remember, that period of history. The atrocities which were inflicted on China haven’t been covered as much as they need to be, and I feel that more people need to be made aware and to understand it.

A fair amount of Western science fiction gets translated for Chinese language markets. Do some of the stories in Sinopticon stand in conversation with Western, Chinese, or other science fictional narratives in important ways?

Modern China is a very outward looking place. Whether it’s indie music or literature, creators take influences from around the world. A lot of the older generations have grown up reading classic Anglophone science fiction, which I get a feeling of in the tone of their works. One of the reasons I instantly found an affinity with the last story of the collection, is that it reminded me of the whimsy, humor, and wit of British science fiction, like as Douglas Adams and Doctor Who, both of which I am a huge fan of. The more literal translation of the work’s title is “The Bookshop at the End of the Universe,” and there are a few elements in it which are totally a love letter to the Hitchhiker’s cycle. I didn’t think the wibbly-wobbly quirkiness and humor in these works would translate well into other cultures, but it seems that the Doctor Who fandom in China is so large that the BBC ended up commissioning some great official art for the China merch, and one of the things that the zhai, or geeky circles, are talking about at the moment is a range of figurines inspired by Frankie and Benjy mouse, the pan dimensional beings who turned up in the first Hitchhiker’s series.

After some consideration and discussion with the author, we decided to give it a different title rather than a direct translation—“Starship: Library,” was closer to the essence of the story. Whilst it has a lot of callbacks to that sort of . . . post-Python British sci-fi humor, it retains its roots in Chinese culture, reinterpreting one of Chinese mythology’s neglected goddesses as the world’s savior.

A lot of the younger writers like A Que, have, like fans around the world, honed their skills in fan fiction, but where that conversation goes is the interesting part. His story, set in a zombie pandemic, has lots of little conversations with Max Brooks’ World War Z, especially in its film version. The zombie, or sangshi story is a quite recent genre in China (not to be confused with hopping jiangshi, which are China’s traditional undead monsters), and has grown completely out of exposure to Western zombie fiction. A Que does some very interesting things with the sangshi in his work, while at the same time breaking the fourth wall and engaging in dialogue with the common tropes of Hollywood cinema. It’s a very good example of Chinese storytelling’s ability to mix humor, action, and tragedy, not just on the same page, but often in the same paragraph.

On your website, you talk about “seeking out works by new emerging voices, that may be passed over by more conservative news agencies and publishers.” Who are some of the new and emerging voices that excite you most, and why?

I’ve spoken a little bit about this in answer to the question about how Sinopticon came about. Now that I’m in a better position to highlight them, I am at least able to write about them, so they don’t completely pass global audiences by. What I’m excited about most are the net novelists who are creating works, in hundreds of new genres, the freedom it’s giving female writers to venture into previously male-dominated literary realms and create female-orientated writing . . . I would love to be able to translate some of these authors, or write about them more, but a lot of it depends on whether Anglophone publishers and platforms are willing to see potential in these diverse works, the importance for translators of color to represent their own heritage and be prepared to provide adequate resources to enable the work.

In your Publishers Weekly interview, you talk a bit about gatekeeping in the world of translation publishing, and a belief that non-Western translators would not do as good a job as Western translators. What are the best ways for editors and publishers to break this cycle, especially given that many editors may not speak the original languages of the work(s) in question?

I think there needs to be a huge, top-down, and institutional change of attitudes in the Anglophone publishing world. To be less Western-centric, to recognize that it’s important for translators of color, of whatever ethnicity, to be able to work on titles from their own cultural heritage. It’s their right, and not an optional approach or magnanimous decision, to allow them to be part of presenting that culture to the world. I don’t mean, at all, that translators can’t work on texts from other cultures. In fact, the whole point of translating is to help people discover works beyond their own traditions. But there’s no excuse, when translating a writer whose work focuses on the culture or history of their ethnic origin, or when commissioning an opera or play that draws heavily from a non-Western culture, to not recruit at least some translators, actors, or consultants that represent that diversity, because there’s “none good enough.” Often the talent they need is not visible because the pool from which the selection is made pre-excludes them.

I believe, especially when dealing with monumental works from a literary tradition other than their own, Western translators might just need to show some humility, step back, and acknowledge that, brilliant as they may be, it’s not really appropriate for them to be the umpteenth white person turning out yet another version of this work, and maybe someone whose heritage it is could bring more to the piece. There is often this backlash from the white establishment who complain about discrimination, which can act as this awful silencer, but if you are trying to be heard, sometimes it’s not ‘til you’re screaming that you can’t be ignored. But in truth, if you want a wider, more diverse scope of writing, you don’t just need more writers and translators of color, you need more commissioning editors, department heads, and executives of color.

Is there anything else you’d really like readers to know about Sinopticon, the authors and their stories, or yourself and your work?

I’ve always said, if you want to find out more about a nation’s fears and dreams, read their science fiction. Lots of social issues have emerged over the last couple of decades of China’s development, for instance, innovative high-tech solutions to these are part of the preoccupations of Chinese authors today. The book isn’t just about these ideas, it sheds light on the current state of China, its people, and society. It’s interesting to ponder on the fate of those who die in space, and how they are memorialized, but . . . it’s a little sadder to think about what happens when a migrant worker dies on the other side of a vast country like China from their hometown. It’s interesting to think about the informational arms race of enhanced intelligence, but a little close to the bone when you are considering what extra classes, societies, and nutritional supplements you need to impose on your child to prepare them for an exceptionally competitive job market in the future. Whilst a lot of the themes explored are universal, I think there is definitely an element of Sinopticon which is about translating China.

Are you working on more projects like this one? What else do you have coming up that readers should know about?

Give me a break please! I’ve lived and breathed this book for the past two years, and have finally got it ready to go to press. I have plenty of ideas for both fiction collections, nonfiction writings, and I have an essay on new Chinese fiction platforms in the Tordotcom collection The Way Spring Arrives, which will be out in March next year, but I think I want to take a little bit of time to reconnect with friends and family before I go back into the cocoon for my next book.

About the Author

Arley Sorg is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine and a 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist. He is also senior editor at Locus Magazine, associate editor at both Lightspeed & Nightmare Magazines, and a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, film & book reviewer, and more. He conducts interviews for multiple venues, including Clarkesworld Magazine and his own site. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, CA but can sometimes be found on Twitter as @arleysorg. In non-pandemic times, Arley usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Explicit Queerness:
A Conversation with Charlie Jane Anders

Arley Sorg

If you ever get to see Charlie Jane Anders host an event where she introduces people, you will be amazed by the way she sparkles; but you’ll also be astonished by her creative prowess. She comes up with highly entertaining, whimsical, and in-some-world probable introductions, individualized for each person she introduces. It’s kind of breathtaking and suggests unfathomable creativity.

Anders was born in Connecticut and grew up in Mansfield. She studied English and Asian literature at Cambridge University and studied abroad in China. To date she has well over one hundred stories published: her nonfiction and fiction appears in a range of publications, from literary notables such as McSweeney’s and Mother Jones to technologically inclined venues such as WIRED and MIT Technology Review to well-established genre magazines like Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and Tor.com.

Anders’ 2005 debut novel, Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) won a Lambda Literary Award and was short listed for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, but this was just the beginning. The 2011 novelette “Six Months, Three Days” (Tor.com) was a Sturgeon and Nebula award finalist and won a Hugo Award. All the Birds in the Sky (Tor), a novel published in 2016, received an Otherwise Award honorable mention, placed sixth in the Goodreads Choice Awards for the Fantasy category (garnering nearly fourteen thousand votes!), was a Hugo finalist, won both a Nebula Award and a Locus Award, and took the fifth spot on the Time Magazine list of the year’s ten best novels. Short story “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” (2017; Boston Review’s anthology Global Dystopias) was a finalist for both Otherwise and Locus awards and won a Sturgeon Award. The 2017 collection Six Months, Three Days, Five Others (Tordotcom publishing) was a Locus Award finalist, and the 2019 short story “The Bookstore at the End of America” (A People’s Future of the United States) won a Locus Award. Not only was 2019 novel The City in the Middle of the Night (Tor Books) a Clarke Award finalist, a Hugo Award finalist, and a Locus Award winner, but it was also named one of the year’s best books by The Guardian, Den of Geek, and Polygon. Even more recently, 2020 novelette “If You Take My Meaning” (Tor.com) was a Sturgeon and Locus award finalist.

Besides being a celebrated fictioneer, Anders was honored with the Emperor Norton Award for “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason” in 2009 for her work with reading series Writers with Drinks—a spoken word “variety show” she founded in 2001 that features science fiction alongside literary fiction, poetry, comedy, and other genres—and science fiction blog io9. Among her many, many feats, she created the award-winning satirical website GodHatesFigs.com, “which is sadly now down, but it’s still up at Archive.org,” once helped to organize a trans spoken word tour called the Cross Gender Caravan, which went all over the country, and during the COVID-19 crisis, she helped to organize a series of online fundraisers for local bookstores at welovebookstores.org. She also helps to organize and cohost the monthly Trans Nerd Meet Up.

With Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders cohosts the two-time Hugo Award-winning podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct, “about the meaning of science fiction.” Her most recent titles are YA sci-fi adventure Victories Greater Than Death, published in April with Tor Teen; Never Say You Can’t Survive, “a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times,” published in August with Tordotcom Publishing; and collection Even Greater Mistakes, due from Tor Books this month. Victories sequel, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, is scheduled for April 2022 publication.

What were the books that were important to you when you first started getting into genre, and do you feel like people should read them, do they still hold up?

There were two books that made me want to write SF, when I was starting out. I read Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks and Geek Love by Katherine Dunn at almost the same time, and they both blew my mind in very different ways. They felt like they were both science fiction, and they were both huge and ambitious—like, they were pushing the limits of what I thought you could accomplish in a science fiction story. Neither of them felt like anything I’d encountered before. I reread parts of Geek Love a few years ago and still really loved it, though I don’t know for sure how it would be read today. And I still love Banks’ writing inordinately. I have a handful of Banks books that I haven’t read yet, and I’m saving them because I know there are no more coming.

Did these books or stories have any measurable effect on your writing?

Yes, definitely. Reading both of those books, I kept thinking, “I could never write something like this, but I really want to try.” Or maybe, more like, “I could never write something like this, but I really want to try to write something else that creates this same feeling of hugeness and strangeness.” Those two books really pushed me to get weirder and to throw myself at the walls of the genre. They felt “slipstream,” which was a term people were using back in the day.

At this point in your career, you’ve received considerable acclaim. Does the recognition drive you?

It’s incredibly gratifying and also very intimidating. I try not to obsess about it too much, because I know it can just drag you down. When I won the Hugo back in 2012, I remember saying to a few people that it felt like something I had to live up to. I interviewed John Kessel around that time, and he said that winning the Nebula Award as a young writer made him feel a lot of pressure to write something especially good afterward, which caused him to be frozen for a year and a half. So, I decided not to obsess too much about it. I often don’t mention the awards in my author bio, since I would rather use that real estate for the titles of stuff I’ve written. My Hugo rockets are in my sweater drawer (partly because I didn’t want my cat to destroy them) and my mom has my Nebula. The Locus awards are behind a pile of books somewhere. I think the Lambda Literary award is out on a shelf because I got that one first.

You had Victories Greater Than Death come out in April, which is a YA book. In your 2016 Locus interview for All the Birds in the Sky, you talked about consciously thinking on “this narrative about finding where you belong in the world, and coming of age . . . ” Are there important similarities between these books?

Yes! I remember thinking to myself that Victories has a lot of resonance with All the Birds. They both have characters who grow up and leave the ordinary behind. And that theme of finding where you belong—but also realizing that belonging is more complicated than just being around people who share something basic or intrinsic with you—is huge in both books. I’ve been revisiting All the Birds a bit lately and it feels like there’s a lot of territory in common.

What is the key to writing a coming-of-age story that really speaks to readers?

What I love in a coming-of-age story is a character who is discovering their identity at the same time that they’re learning how the world works. There’s something super powerful and also heartbreaking about realizing that the world wasn’t what you thought, while also claiming your own selfhood and your own power. I sort of think of Empire Strikes Back as the great coming-of-age story, alongside the Earthsea books. And more recently, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.

Victories centers on Tina and her friend Rachael, pitted against The Compassion and Marrant. What are your favorite things about Tina and Rachael, and what excites you most about the world/universe you’ve built?

I love the friendship between Tina and Rachael—the book honestly didn’t start to click the way it does now until I figured out those two and their relationship. In earlier drafts, it was a bit thornier and more antagonistic, because of Tina always wanting to protect Rachael, and they weren’t exactly friends until toward the end of the book. But having Rachael be in on Tina’s secret from the beginning, cheering Tina on but also wishing that she could go into space as well, opened things up in a way that made the rest of the story way more fun to write. I love how Rachael brings another perspective to the story, because she’s an introverted artist who isn’t usually part of these kinds of stories, and how Rachael ends up bringing this whole group of teenagers from Earth together. My favorite thing about this universe is probably that the universal translator, the EverySpeak, will not let you misgender anyone. It will make sure everyone hears your correct pronoun, even if someone intentionally tries to get it wrong.

Book 2 in the series, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, is scheduled for April 2022. Can you tell us anything about where the story goes in Dreams?

Sure! Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak basically reveals all the stuff I hinted at in the first book, and we get answers to all of the mysteries/questions that were posed the first time out. We visit the Palace of Scented Tears and meet the Queen, and we discover the secrets of the ancient gods whose atrocities made the galaxy the humanoid-centric place it is today. The second book has a strong theme around being able to witness horrors and confront evil, and still be able to be creative and build community. Like, how do you see the worst the universe has to offer and still keep going? Also, there is a definite “rise of fascism” story line that may have been partly influenced by, ahem, certain events. It turns out that when adults confront scary stuff, they lose their heads and make really terrible choices.

Your collection, Even Greater Mistakes, is about to come out. In your recent nonfiction book, Never Say You Can’t Survive, you talk about writing fiction as a way to help deal with the terrible things that can happen in real life. Are there stories in the collection that were difficult to revisit, some that carried sharper moments than others?

There’s one story in Even Greater Mistakes that’s really hard for me to reread: “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue.” That is the dystopian nightmare I cooked up right before Trump’s inauguration in 2017, when I was terrified about what this new era could mean for trans people. As I discuss in Never Say You Can’t Survive, imagining a distorted, surreal version of the absolute worst-case scenario helped me to process my fears and feel okay. But that story is really gut-wrenching, on purpose, even though it has a somewhat hopeful ending. I’m still really proud of it, and I hear all the time from trans people that it has meant something to them—I also hear from cis people that it helped them to understand a bit more. The other stories in the book are ones I never get tired of revisiting.

Collections can often bring stories back into focus, giving them new life. Are there one or two stories here that you thought would make more of a splash, that really excited you or meant a great deal to you, but that just didn’t get noticed the way other pieces did?

I would say about half the stories in the book are ones which slid under the radar, and I am very excited for more people to discover them. Most of the time, short fiction is kind of overlooked unless people really make a point of celebrating it. This is one reason I’m so glad Locus is still going strong: all of the thoughtful short fiction reviews. Like, “Vampire Zombie vs. Fairy Werewolf” might be the most fun thing I’ve written, and it kind of slid under the radar. And there are a handful of stories which appeared in literary magazines that not many SF readers probably checked out. Like “My Breath is a Rudder,” “Captain Roger in Heaven,” “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things,” and a few others. I feel like there are a handful of stories in the book that a lot of people might have read, but most of them will probably be new to most people.

Publishers Weekly says, “Each tale immerses readers completely and effortlessly into the tense scenarios Anders imagines. The result is both rewarding and impressive.” Even Greater Mistakes offers nineteen stories. If readers looked at three stories in this book, what would you want them to be, and why?

It’s weird—because like I said, I think there are a few stories in there that have gotten a lot of eyeballs already. “Six Months, Three Days” is an obvious choice, and so is “As Good As New,” which was featured on LeVar Burton Reads. “Don’t Press Charges” is also a story that got a ton of love. I guess I’d like for people to know that this collection goes in a lot of weirder, sillier, more outlandish directions than they might expect from those stories. Like a few of them are a bit raunchier, or more obnoxious in other ways. My roots in queer lit are showing here, and so is my time in the trenches of literary fiction generally. Part of why I’m excited is that people are going to get to see more of the range of what I write.

Which stories do you think may challenge readers more in some ways, and how so?

I do think some people will find the sex and explicit queerness in stories like “Rudder” and “Captain Roger” and be a little startled. “Nasty Things” kind of talks about queer spaces and what it means to lose them to gentrification and displacement, and along the way the characters talk about the ways that we build community when we’re trying to get laid. There is definitely a thread running through some of these stories of not just acknowledging, but celebrating, horniness and healthy, consensual hookups. It doesn’t get super explicit for the most part, in terms of long descriptions of body parts, but the sex-positivity is right there.

When you write short fiction, what are the biggest challenges for you, and has this changed since the days of your first fiction publications?

I think the main challenges are the same at any length—figuring out how the story makes sense, and finding a good ending that doesn’t feel like a cop-out. I haven’t written as much short fiction in the past few years precisely because the challenges are the same—if I write a novel, I only have to agonize over the ending once, whereas five short stories have five endings to stress out over. I really miss writing short stories, and I hope I can get back to them when the YA trilogy is put to bed. If I had my way, I’d be writing short stories all the time.

What else are you working on, what do you have coming up that you’d like folks to know about?

Feverishly working on the third book in the Unstoppable trilogy. Plus, there’s an adult novel that hasn’t been announced yet, but I’ve already written about half of it, and I’m having a total blast. I cannot wait to be able to talk about it!

About the Author

Arley Sorg is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine and a 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist. He is also senior editor at Locus Magazine, associate editor at both Lightspeed & Nightmare Magazines, and a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, film & book reviewer, and more. He conducts interviews for multiple venues, including Clarkesworld Magazine and his own site. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, CA but can sometimes be found on Twitter as @arleysorg. In non-pandemic times, Arley usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Editor’s Desk:
Changing the Conventional Wisdom

Neil Clarke

“Everyone knows you can’t make money in short fiction.”

—conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom often has an element of truth to it, but sometimes it’s used as an excuse to keep things the way they are or to discourage people from trying something hard. The problem is that it reframes beliefs and expectations rather than addressing why it’s hard to make money in short fiction.

Fifteen years into this career, I’m still asking why. It’s a topic on which I’ve opined many times. There’s a long record of this in convention panels, blog posts, editorials, and introductions to my Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies. Each time I get close, I discover another spiral that takes us deeper into another level of problems. To make matters worse, many of the issues are directly tied to perks, which causes some to be reluctant to even discuss them.

Here’s two easy examples:

“There are too many markets relative to the number of paying readers to be sustainable” is also “there’s a wider and more diverse array of stories being told now than ever.”

and

“Free online fiction has created a perception that short fiction doesn’t need to be paid for or isn’t worth paying more than a little for” is also “the reach and availability of free online fiction has reinvigorated the field by bringing in a large number of new readers from all over the world.”

The situations that created these “problems” are also responsible for creating the “benefits.” Far too often, one will be acknowledged without the other. You can’t solve the problem without understanding the benefit and you won’t be able to keep the benefit without addressing the problem. It spirals further when the linkages between the two are ignored.

There’s no denying that the landscape of short fiction has been radically altered by the introduction of free online fiction. In that case, is the original seed of truth in the conventional wisdom simply a relic from a day gone by?

Language is important. Is repeating the wisdom what shapes the current reality? Similarly, are little things, like calling SFWA’s qualifying rate a “professional” rate, just reinforcements? (Note: SFWA’s bylaws never call it professional.) It’s the MINIMUM qualifying rate. The industry should be aiming higher than minimum. Besides, do we really think that eight cents/word is a professional pay rate? Do you know how long it takes most writers to write a story?

Now, before some people jump down my throat, I’m fully aware that a number of markets can’t afford to pay the qualifying rate or more. I’m not suggesting publishers spend beyond their means. If you want them to stick around, they have to work within their means. Besides, if an author wants to sell their story for less than the qualifying rate, that’s their decision. If anything, perhaps pay rate as the primary indicator of what makes a qualifying (or even professional) market is yet another relic of a different era.

We’ve always paid over the SFWA rate because we believed that authors should be paid fairly for their work. Fairly, to us, was not the minimum. Where we (and many other online magazines) failed was that we didn’t think the same way about ourselves or our staff. We’d get what was left, which was never much. Over the last decade, I’ve spent considerable effort to address this at Clarkesworld. In the end, it’s all driven by a spreadsheet that ties average monthly revenue to pay increases across the magazine.

Last month, we increased our pay rate for authors/translators from ten to twelve cents/word. Since they were paid better than everyone else from the start, each cycle on the spreadsheet ends with a boost to author pay. This increase signals the completion of one major round of pay adjustments. Do I consider twelve cents/word to be professional? Hell no. It’s just a step and there’s many cycles left to go. It’s a long spreadsheet.

How was this possible? I’m looking directly at our subscribers/supporters when I say this. You. Each subscription or new supporter took us a tiny step closer to the next goal. It’s oddly appropriate that we would cross this milestone at this time of year. Thanksgiving will be celebrated here this month and you will be front and center in our hearts and minds. Thank you for your continued support.

If you look at the numbers, there are more than enough people reading short fiction that making a living at it is theoretically possible. Still hard, but if we’re willing to challenge the conventional wisdom and frame it around the realities of this age, then we can work towards it. We’re living in a time where there’s a sincere push (and some improvements) to give fast food and retail workers a living wage. Is it really such a leap to hope that short fiction could find a path too? Online fiction changed the landscape of short fiction, but just for a moment, imagine the revolution a living wage would bring to the table . . .

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a nine-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, Touchable Unreality, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Years series. His next anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 6, will be published this November by Night Shade Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

Cover Art: Space Cadet

Pascal Blanché

About the Artist

Pascal Blanché is a French artist, with more than twenty-five years of experience in the gaming industry. By day, he works at Behaviour Interactive as Art Director. By night, he likes to work on more personal explorations and build bold new worlds.