“Gift of the Kites”
by Jim C. Hines

The first time Jesse saw the black Buka was in the park. He was flying a plastic Superman kite, dueling against his step-father’s rainbow box kite.

Jesse yanked the blue nylon string, swooping his kite toward his step-father’s.

Kentaro dodged easily. “Too broad a strike,” he called, laughing. “A true fighter kite would loop around and cut your line.”

“Get him, Jesse,” cheered Jesse’s mother, sitting in the shade on one of the picnic benches.

At twelve years old, Jesse felt a mix of pride and embarrassment at her enthusiasm. Flushing, he unwrapped a bit more line, sending his kite higher. He dove again, missed, then tugged the kite in a tight turn that nearly clipped Kentaro’s kite. His mother whistled.

“Much better,” Kentaro said, grinning. He pulled his kite through a long ‘J’ in salute. “Amazing control from a plastic store-bought kite. You’re sure you have no Japanese blood?”

A shadow caught Jesse’s attention. A black rectangular kite leapt from the horizon, corkscrewing through the sky. Jesse ran toward the fence, hoping to glimpse the kite’s owner. His Superman kite followed like an obedient blue and red puppy.

“What is it?” his mother called.

Higher and higher the black kite flew. The string was invisible to Jesse’s eyes, but given the angle, the owner had to be by the highway. The wind carried exhaust fumes to Jesse’s nose.

“It’s a Buka kite,” Jesse yelled. The black fighting kite moved like no kite he had ever seen. It flew and bucked like a thing alive.

Kentaro shielded his eyes. “I see nothing.”

Jesse’s bowels grew cold, and sweat beaded his forehead. He felt exposed, a rabbit trapped in the open as a hawk swooped down. He wanted to run away, but his legs trembled, and he could barely stand.

The Buka turned slightly. Jesse’s breath caught. Something within him knew he wasn’t the kite’s target. “Mom, look out!”

Kentaro was still searching for the kite, but the terror in Jesse’s voice brought him sprinting. His box kite crashed, forgotten. “What is it?”

Jesse shook his head. There was no time. The Buka was moving faster. It was so big, a window of darkness the size of a bus. How could anyone control a kite that huge?

“Jesse, I’m here.” Kentaro squeezed his shoulders.

The wind blew harder. Jesse’s kite tugged its line, like an animal struggling to escape its leash. Jesse twisted away from his step-father, circling his kite around to intercept the Buka. He couldn’t see the other kite’s line, but he knew where it had to be. Closer and closer it flew. It began to block the wind, forcing Jesse to shorten his line to keep his own kite aloft.

Jesse backed away from the fence, trying to stay between the black kite and his mother. The Buka paused in its flight, then dove. Jesse yanked his own line, hoping to tangle his kite with the Buka and bring them both down.

The blue line quivered. Ice shot through Jesse’s fingers. He cried out, and then his line was falling, cut cleanly a short length from the kite.

“Mom!” Jesse screamed.

The Buka touched the earth, an enormous sheet of blackness that blotted half the park from view. When it rose, Jesse’s mother was on the ground, shaking uncontrollably.

“Susan!” Kentaro shouted. He reached her side before Jesse, catching her shoulders and moving her away from the steel legs of the picnic table. “Jesse, get her medicine from the car.  Quickly!”

Jesse cried as he ran, knowing it was too late. Whatever the black kite had done, no pill would fix it.

Beside the parking lot, his Superman kite sat torn and broken in the branches of a spruce tree.

One year later, Jesse sat in his bedroom, painting broad, garish stripes over the paper of his newest kite. He longed to add tassels to the corners, but such decoration would be too obviously Asian.

After his mother’s death, the courts had given full custody to his biological father Sam, a man Jesse hadn’t seen in years. But Sam had kept current with his child support, and Michigan law said that was enough to tear Jesse away from Kentaro.

Jesse jabbed his brush into the paint, remembering how Sam had thrown out Jesse’s ebony chopsticks, his anime collection, anything with any trace of Kentaro’s Japanese heritage. He hoped this kite would slip past Sam’s radar. Jesse needed a kite, and what better design than the Hata, a diamond-shaped fighter traditionally painted red, white, and blue?

Jesse pushed away from the desk and stretched. The small bedroom still didn’t feel like his room. Faded patches marked the wood-paneled walls of the former den. Several cigarette burns marked the carpet.

He glanced at the picture taped to the window, the one of his mother after one of her bike races. The hospital said her death last year was a reaction to her epilepsy medicine. Jesse knew better.

He returned to the desk and examined the bamboo splints. The wood flexed into a perfect arc. He tested the curve and the balance, then used string to bind the splints together.

By the time Sam’s car door slammed in the driveway, the paint had dried enough for Jesse to begin gluing the paper to the frame. The paper rustled, tasting an unfelt wind.

The bedroom door opened. “You got a card or something,” Sam said. Jesse wondered if anyone else would have heard the slur in his voice.

“Thanks.” Had Sam been drinking to mark the anniversary of Susan’s death? Why such grief for a woman he hadn’t seen in nine years? Jesse shoved the bitterness aside and grabbed the envelope. There was no return address. His pulse quickened, and he casually tossed it onto his desk.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Sam asked.

“I’m busy.”

Sam grabbed the envelope. “Open it.”

Forcing a smile, Jesse used one of his Exacto knives to slit the envelope. Inside the card, Kentaro’s precise handwriting read:

Jesse,

It’s been a year since Susan left us. I want you to know you are still in my thoughts, and in my heart.

That was as far as Jesse got before Sam snatched it away. “I knew it. Why can’t he leave us alone? You’re my son!”

Jesse grabbed for the card and missed.

“Bad enough he took Susan. You’re my son.” He glanced past Jesse, studying the half-assembled kite. “What’ve you been working on?”

“Nothing much.” Jesse held his breath.

He scowled. “Where’d you learn how to build these?”

“The library,” Jesse said.

Sam’s forehead wrinkled as he stared at the kite, like he was trying to dig up a long-buried memory. “Weren’t you out flying kites the day Susan died?” His face tightened. “You and that Jap were both flying the things.”

“You don’t understand. I have to build this.”

“Why?” Sam snapped.

Jesse bit his lip. He had never told anyone about the black Buka and his own failure. Sometimes he spotted the Buka in the distance as he mowed the lawn or walked back from the bus stop. It was waiting for something. Waiting for him. Jesse didn’t know why. All he knew was that he had to find a way to beat it. “Sam, please.”

“I’m your father. When are you going to start calling me Dad?” He grabbed the kite, breaking the spars and using the jagged ends to tear the paper. He crumpled it into a ball, then forced the whole thing into the garbage. “The sooner you stop living in the past, the better off we’ll be.”

The door slammed. Jesse counted to twenty, first in English, then Japanese. When Sam didn’t return, he went to the trash and pulled out the remains of his kite. One look told him it was unsalvageable.

“Kentaro was my father,” he muttered as he retrieved his Exacto knife and tried to cut the few bits of undamaged paper from the frame. It had been four months since his last letter to Kentaro. Sam had almost caught him sneaking back from the public mailbox down the street. Jesse didn’t dare use their own mailbox. He even had to buy his own stamps from the machine at the grocery store. Sam noticed missing stamps as quickly as he spotted long-distance calls on the phone bill.

Jesse glanced down and found he had cut the paper into a rough hexagon, like a Rokkaku kite. He trimmed tiny sticks of bamboo, fitting them to the lines of the Rokkaku. A strange warmth flowed through his fingers. The glue dried impossibly fast. He grabbed a spool of black thread and tied a small four-point bridle.

As he finished the last knot, the kite leapt from the desk. The spool of thread bounced to the carpet.

Jesse held out his hand in amazement, and the tiny kite returned. The thread tickled his fingers. Abstract shapes of red and blue covered the back, like an exotic butterfly.

“Hold still,” Jesse said. The kite obeyed, hovering on an unfelt wind. Smiling, Jesse cut the thread, leaving a yard or so dangling from the bridle. “Fly around-”

Before he could finish the thought, the kite flew a fast circle around the room.

Fingers shaking, Jesse scrawled a quick note on another scrap of paper. He tied it to the thread.

“Can you find him?”

The kite flew to the window and spun like a top. Jesse slid the pane to one side, then pushed out the bottom corner of the screen. Distance soon swallowed the little Rokkaku, leaving Jesse to wonder how long it would take to traverse the forty miles to Kentaro’s home.

Later that night, Jesse heard a tapping at the window. He climbed out of bed and flipped on his desk lamp. Pushing the window open, he helped the kite inside. A tight tube of paper was knotted to the thread.

Jesse,

I won’t pretend to understand the miracle you’ve created, but I thank God you did. Tonight it was like having you here with me.

You have a gift. I’ve known it ever since you flew your first kite. I’m more proud of you than you can know.

I trust this little Rokkaku will find you again. I wish I could do the same.

I love you.

Kentaro

Grinning like it was Christmas morning, Jesse grabbed pen and paper and began to write.

It took two months to build another Hata fighting kite. He worked on it in the attic and hid it behind the artificial Christmas tree. Whatever power had guided him with the Rokkaku remained, and he could feel the Hata yearning to soar through the clouds. Finding time to fly it was difficult, though.

Jesse grabbed his lunch and his backpack as he headed for the door. “See you tonight, Dad.” The word burnt his mouth, but it kept Sam happy.

Outside, Jesse crouched behind the bushes and waited. He froze as the front door swung open, and barely breathed until Sam’s car disappeared down the street. Only then did he sneak back inside to fetch his kite.

More than an hour later, he was exiting the bus near the park where his mother had died.

Jesse searched the park as he walked. He knew Kentaro wouldn’t be there, but he looked anyway. Jesse had said when and where to meet, but Kentaro refused. He wouldn’t violate Sam’s rules.

“Why do you care what Sam thinks?” Jesse muttered, more hurt than angry. “He’s not my father.”

He was worried about Kentaro. The last few letters had been different, somehow. Longer, almost rambling. And Kentaro’s handwriting had decayed ever so slightly. It still looked like he drew each letter with a ruler, but the spacing was more ragged.

He spotted a black shadow among the clouds. He felt no surprise. He had seen the Buka more and more often lately. It always stayed in the distance, watching.

Jesse tugged on the leather work gloves he had swiped from the garage, then hoisted his diamond Hata kite. Red and blue Kanji characters marked the kite’s center: tanchi, the symbols for heaven and earth.

There was little wind, but it didn’t matter. Jesse could feel the Hata pulling skyward. He held the stiff thirty-pound line. The first hundred feet were the cutting line, coated in glue and ground glass. Holding the line carefully, Jesse allowed the kite to rise, and soon it was flying above the trees.

He ignored the Buka as he practiced. A sharp dive here, followed by a wide loop, then another dive to slash an opponent’s line. He visualized the cutting line as a blade slicing through the air. He couldn’t tell how much of his control was physical and how much was like the little Rokkaku, an extension of himself that obeyed thought alone.

Jesse had spent hours staring out the window at school, watching the birds and memorizing their movements. The small sparrows banding together to drive away the crows…the jostling of pigeons as they fought for scraps by the cafeteria…the hummingbirds hovering and darting at the feeders by the fence.

Time slowed as he imitated those movements. He stilled the Hata in the midst of a breeze, then darted a short distance. He circled, taunting an imaginary crow. Faster and faster the kite danced through each attack.

The wind changed, bringing the smell of cigarette smoke. Before Jesse could move, a strong hand clamped his shoulder. “I’ve spent two hours trying to find your worthless hide,” Sam thundered.

Jesse kept his grip on the kite string, trying to reel it in without being too obvious. “I’m sorry. I-”

“Kites again.” Sam shook his head in disgust. He flicked the cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “He told me this was where you’d be.”

“Who?”

“What is it about him?” Sam rubbed his scalp, making his hair stand up in spikes. “How did that little Jap turn you against me?”

“He didn’t.” Jesse caught himself before he could add, You did.

“I figured I’d be nice. Give you a chance to say good-bye. You know what it’s like to walk into that school and have your secretary tell me you were out? To look at me like I’m an incompetent father because I don’t know where my own kid is?”

“What do you mean, say good-bye?” Jesse asked. He could feel the cold in his gut, and his hands began to shake.

Sam sighed, and a bit of his anger seemed to dissipate. “Jesse, Kentaro’s got himself a nasty case of cancer. He’s been in and out of the hospital for months. They didn’t catch it in time, and-”

“You’re lying!”

Sam’s expression hardened. “I wouldn’t lie about this.”

Jesse looked up. The Buka had moved closer, silently confirming Sam’s words. The black kite was like a window into darkness, swallowing the sky itself.

“He can’t be sick,” Jesse said. “He would have told me.”

“So you have been talking to him.” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. The blade clicked open, and for a second Jesse thought Sam was going to stab him. Instead, he grabbed the kite line.

“This is the only fighter I have!” Jesse stared at the Buka. “You have to take me to the hospital. You have to let me save him!”

“I’m your father. It’s time to let him go, son.”

Jesse yanked the line hard. This part lacked the cutting glass, but the waxed line still cut deep into Sam’s palm. Sam swore, but didn’t release his grip.

“Dad, please,” Jesse said.

Sam pressed the knife blade against the line. Taut with tension, the line snapped instantly.

“You’re grounded until I say otherwise. And if you take one step out of my house, except for school, I’ll put you in the hospital myself.”

Tears stung Jesse’s eyes as he watched the Hata spin downward. “No,” he whispered. Thinking about his little Rokkaku, he reached toward the Hata, trying to control it. “Don’t fall.”

“Come on,” Sam said, tugging him toward the parking lot. “Behave yourself, and maybe I’ll take you to visit Kentaro next week.”

“Next week will be too late.” Jesse concentrated, imagining he still held the Hata’s line. He could feel the wind beneath the kite. Ever so gently, he shaped the air itself, creating updrafts to lift the kite higher. Slowly, the kite responded, floating on nonexistent winds. “Wait for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” To his left, the black Buka dipped in salute and disappeared.

Sneaking out of school that afternoon was absurdly easy. The principal would call Sam, of course, and Jesse would be in even more trouble, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to the hospital.

As the bus pulled to a halt, Jesse spotted the black kite hovering over the parking garage, drifting slowly closer. He grabbed his backpack and ran to the back of the hospital. At the fire escape, he climbed the dumpsters to reach the bottom rung. Minutes later, he was on the roof, unzipping his backpack to free his little Rokkaku. He doubted it would do much against the Buka, but he planned to fight with any tool he could get.

The Rokkaku began to orbit Jesse’s head, spinning like a top to shed the drizzle that had begun to fall. Jesse clenched his fists, praying the Hata still flew and calling it with all his heart. “Please….”

The Buka drew closer. It was smaller than Jesse remembered. Maybe four feet high and twice as wide. Jesse’s little Rokkaku leapt in response, like an angry kitten.

Where was the Hata? Had it fallen? It had taken Jesse several hours to get out of school and make his way here. Whatever strange magic connected him to the kites, maybe it hadn’t been strong enough to keep the Hata aloft.

And then something tickled his hand. Jesse clamped down, feeling the familiar line tug his fingers. The end was frayed from Sam’s knife, leaving only a few hundred feet. It would have to be enough.

The Rokkaku darted out of the way as Jesse flew the Hata into position, sweeping the red and blue diamond in a wide figure eight.

The Buka streaked toward the hospital, as if it had been waiting for this moment. Jesse ran along the roof, pulling his kite down to intercept. His shorter line was an advantage here, giving him speed. The Hata ducked beneath the bigger kite, then flew upward. The Buka pulled back, barely escaping Jesse’s cutting line.

How long would the line last in the rain? he wondered. At least he hadn’t used the traditional mix of rice paste and broken glass. Wood glue might be too modern for Kentaro, but it should endure the water better.

Jesse moved to intercept another attack, sweeping his kite like an enormous saber. Each time the Buka approached, Jesse was there, using every trick he could think of to drive it back.

His arms began to ache. He pulled in a bit of slack, hoping to lure the black kite closer. If he could just get his cutting line within range, he could try to cut the other kite down. Even though he couldn’t see the Buka’s line, he knew in his blood where it had to be. But the Buka moved impossibly fast, and every one of Jesse’s attacks came up short.

“Jesse! How the hell did you get up here?”

The line dug into his fingers as he turned to see Sam and a security guard stepping on to the roof. Someone must have seen Jesse on the roof.

The Buka took advantage of Jesse’s distraction, swooping down at a sharp angle. Jesse ran to block, but the Buka veered, dragging its invisible line toward Jesse’s own kite. The Buka’s line brushed the edge of Jesse’s Hata. Terrible cold burned Jesse’s hands, and then it was all he could do to keep the Hata aloft.

“Kid, watch out for the edge,” the guard yelled.

It gave Jesse an idea. He hurried toward the corner of the roof and hopped onto the ledge, a low, foot-wide wall of concrete. The cars in the street looked like plastic models. Jesse wavered slightly, yanking his kite to correct his balance.

“Jesse, no! Get down now!”

There was real fear in Sam’s voice. “Stay back,” Jesse yelled. His little Rokkaku buzzed anxiously around his head. He could hear Sam and the guard talking, but at least they weren’t coming any closer. They wouldn’t risk him falling. The next time he spared a glance, the roof was empty.

Jesse pulled the Hata in, trying to assess the damage. The bamboo spar had cracked near the left corner, causing it to flap back and forth.

The Buka attacked again, moving to block Jesse’s wind, then streaking down as the Hata fell. Jesse dragged his kite closer, until he was pulling the cutting line itself. The glass scraped skin from his palms, but he kept pulling, avoiding the Buka’s attack.

He loosed his hands suddenly, allowing the Hata to leap higher. It swung in a broad, flat arc, seeking to decapitate the other kite. The Buka circled away.

Attack and parry, feint and counter. The sparrow and the starling. Every move put more strain on Jesse’s damaged kite. He had waterproofed and layered the kite, but there was only so much it could take.

“Jesse, come down this instant, dammit!”

Sam had returned. Jesse ignored him, but he couldn’t ignore the second voice. Weak and hoarse, Kentaro yelled, “Listen to your father, Jesse.”

Jesse glanced back. Kentaro stood supported by Sam on one side and the guard on the other. A trailing tube connected him to an I.V. stand. The rain-damp hospital gown emphasized the boniness of his shoulders. His bare arms were little more than sticks. Panic clenched Jesse’s chest. The Buka was so close, and now Kentaro stood exposed.

“Get out of here,” Jesse yelled. “Kentaro, please!”

Kentaro reached out. “If you won’t obey your father, obey me. Come down.”

“I’m trying to save you!”

“I know.” Kentaro smiled. “But not like this.”

Sudden fear made Jesse turn. The Buka had already begun its attack. Jesse jerked the line with all his strength, but it was too late. The Buka’s invisible line cut the Hata a second time. Jesse had kept the Buka from cutting his line, but it made little difference.

“No….” The Hata began to fall, little more than a crumple of silk and sticks. He heard footsteps behind him.

“No,” he said again, more firmly this time. His little Rokkaku shot backward, and he heard Sam cry out in surprise.

Jesse tightened his grip, forcing his broken kite higher while the Rokkaku kept Sam back. Jesse battled the wind and the kite’s own weight with for every inch.

“What’s he doing?” Sam demanded.

“Trying to save my life,” Kentaro said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” Kentaro said. “But that is what he’s doing.”

Jesse relaxed his fingers, feeling blood pound through the cramped muscles. His kite bucked harder as the wind tossed it about.

“We are family, Jesse,” Kentaro said. “Nothing can change that. Not the court, not even death. Your little Rokkaku showed me the strength of that bond. You don’t have to do this.”

“He’s not your son,” Sam snapped. “I swear, if you weren’t dying-”

“He’s not going to die,” Jesse said, newfound determination in his voice. The Rokkaku shot past his ear and disappeared into the rain. Jesse didn’t need to see it. He could sense it spinning through the air.

The Rokkaku collided with the black Buka, punching a hole in the blackness.

The black kite bucked, but Jesse had already brought the Rokkaku around, tearing a second hole, then a third. The slender spars of his Rokkaku splintered with each blow, but Jesse forced it to attack again and again until it disintegrated.

Only then did he allow his Hata to fall. His line intersected the Buka’s, and he pulled so hard he fell onto his back, knocking the breath from his lungs. The last thing he saw was the black kite dropping out of sight, followed by his own ruined Hata.

Sam’s fingers dug into Jesse’s arm, hauling him upright. Fear, confusion, and fury all battled across Sam’s features. Jesse wondered which would win.

The guard yelled, forestalling the argument. “Hey, you can’t come up here.”

A young girl stood in the doorway leading down into the hospital. The guard shook his head. “When did we get a revolving door on the rooftop?”

The girl wore a black leather jacket and torn jeans. Her black shoes gleamed wetly, even though the rain seemed not to touch her. In her hands, she held a small black Buka kite. She touched the guard with the corner of the kite. “Leave.”

Blank-faced, the guard retreated back into the hospital. Jesse started to shiver, sensing the power in that kite.

“You know the traditions?” she asked, her eyes never leaving Jesse’s.

Slowly, Jesse nodded. He clasped his bleeding hands together to stop them from trembling.

“What traditions?” Sam snapped.

“When fliers battle,” Kentaro said, “one who cuts down another’s kite often claims and flies that kite as his own.”

“No more kites,” Sam said. “If I catch you with another one of those damn-”

“You won’t catch him,” the girl said, grinning.

Jesse pulled free of Sam’s grasp and walked toward her. “You killed my mother.” He couldn’t feel anything at all. Kentaro’s hand came to rest on Jesse’s shoulder.

“A chemical reaction killed your mother,” she said. “I helped her spirit on the next stage of her journey. It’s what I do.” She frowned. “What you do, now.” She held out the Buka.

Jesse put his hand on Kentaro’s. “What about my father?”

“His body is failing. If it’s any comfort, you’ll be with him at the end. You’ll be the one to ease him on his way.”

“No,” Jesse said. “You can’t make me-”

“I don’t understand,” Sam said, coming around to Jesse’s other side. “It’s just a kite.” He reached toward the girl.

From the center of the kite, a black line snapped out to hit Sam in the chest. He fell back, gasping.

“Stop,” Jesse said. At once the kite obeyed, and the line vanished. “Sam, are you okay?”

Sam nodded, though his face was pale.

“You will have power and responsibility both,” the girl said. “Most importantly, you will have freedom.”

Kentaro started to speak, but a coughing fit took him.

“Leave them alone!” Jesse took a step toward the girl, but she shook her head. This wasn’t her doing. Jesse caught Kentaro and held him until the fit passed.

Jesse’s eyes watered. “I won’t kill Kentaro.”

“I’ll return for him if you don’t,” she said. “Which would bring him greater peace?”

Slowly, Jesse reached for the kite. It was surprisingly light. The black paper was dark as night, with no sign of damage, but he recognized the Buka he had fought. The bamboo spars were yellow with age, and the bridle was simple hemp. A sparkling of light trailed from the bridle to his hands, hands which no longer bled or hurt.

“Jesse, what are you doing?” Sam asked.

Before anyone could react, Jesse pressed the kite into Kentaro’s hands. The girl started to protest, but Jesse cut her off. “It’s my kite now. I choose to give it to him.” Already he saw new strength in Kentaro’s fragile frame. “Give it to me when I’m older, if you want. But at least this way…this way you could still visit sometimes? We could fly kites again.” He glanced at Sam, daring him to argue.

But Sam said nothing. More than anything, he looked lost.

Kentaro gave Jesse a quick hug, and Jesse marveled at the strength in those arms, even as the contact sent frigid chills through his body.

“Are you sure, Jesse?”

He nodded.

“I almost forgot.” The girl reached into her jacket and pulled out a small scrap of blue and red. “You’ll want this, I think.” She took Kentaro’s hand, leading him away.

Seconds later, Sam and Jesse stood alone in the rain.

Jesse cleared his throat. “Thank you. For telling me about Kentaro.”

Sam stared for a long time, until Jesse began to fidget. “That was…that was pretty impressive,” he said finally. “The way you handled that kite.”

“Thanks.”

“Kentaro-” Sam hesitated. “He did a good job with you, didn’t he?”

Jesse flexed his hands, studying the newly healed pink skin. “He’s family. I had to save him.”

“Yeah.” Sam squeezed Jesse’s shoulder. “You did a good job, son.”

As he followed Sam inside, Jesse stopped to look into the sky, where the black Buka saluted with a broad ‘J’ before disappearing into the clouds.

About the Author

Jim C. Hines has sold six novels, forty short stories, and one bumper sticker at the time this bio was written. His short work has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Sword & Sorceress, and Turn the Other Chick, among others. His story “Blade of the Bunny” earned him a great big trophy from Writers of the Future back in ‘99. Hines is a known goblin sympathizer, author of the humorous goblin trilogy from DAW Books. His next novel, The Stepsister Scheme, will be out in January of 2009, and is best described as a mash-up of fairy tale princesses and Charlie’s Angels. He lives in Michigan with his wife and two children.

“Passwords”
by John A. McDermott

Every four months a security program sent Max an e-mail to his work account reminding him to change his password. The first reminder came two weeks before he had to make the shift or lose access to his incoming messages. The second reminder came ten days before the change was necessary. The third note — a little shorter, even curt — came with a week left before he was locked out. Max ignored them all. It had been seventeen days since the initial message — Dearest Max, A Gentle Missive to Stir You — and three since the last — Attention: You Will Be Denied Access — and still, Max could log on safely, read, respond, ignore, even delete, his mail. The deadline passed and nothing changed.

Max reluctantly read the latest contact this morning, the first in a line of four messages, the yellow envelope pulsing from his mailbox icon, the red flag flipped up. Change Now, is all it said. No, he muttered and shook his head (though no one was there to hear or see him. His cubicle had high beige walls and most of his co-workers had yet to arrive, coffee and umbrellas in hand). He’d deliberately resisted the password change. He was sick of new codes. He’d worked for Bender Incorporated for seven years. A new password every four months (that’s three a year, folks) and the total tally, so far: twenty. The one he refused would have made twenty-one. 21: the year of independence, the year of maturation, the password to full citizenship.

What were the twenty previous passwords? A sampling: his childhood street address; his mother’s nickname; his wife’s first dog; his wife’s last dog before marriage (an ancient lab who’d hated him, who’d crapped in his running shoes, but whom Max had beaten by default — cancer clocked him before Jenny had to make a choice); the last name of his little brother’s favorite hockey player; his father’s profession; the last name of the first girl he’d had sex with; the first name of the last girl he wanted to have sex with; his favorite brand of cookie. And the list continued.

Max was spent. Emotionally, creatively, typographically. Spent.

He didn’t really want his mail, anyway. It all amounted to client complaints, boss nagging, and Jenny asking him when he was going to be home, what did he want for dinner, was he sick of Chinese? Chinese. He’d never invented a password in Chinese. He didn’t know any Chinese. He didn’t know any Chinese people. He remembered the actor’s name from Kung Fu. Carradine. He’d have to mix it up. CareAd9. That might work.

That was stupid. It was the actor’s last name with a nasty cold.

He wished he could karate chop his monitor, a swift open hand right down the center. The glass would blow out, the gray casing would crack, open like a shotgun wound, the wires and boards tumble out like so many high-tech intestines.

The second note this morning was from a supplier in Asia. Things will be delayed. A dockworker’s strike somewhere. (He only skimmed the note — Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong? He didn’t remember.) He was already debating how to break the news to his boss that the goods — a load of children’s raincoats dotted with the latest cartoon craze — wouldn’t arrive by the end of the week. It hadn’t stopped raining in eleven days and for each of the eleven days his boss had asked, “Where are the Pickle coats, Max? Where are the Pickle coats? There are wet kids out there. Wet kids with concerned parents who are ready to give us money, Max. Where are the coats?” The cartoon was a talking Pickle. Max had seen the show regularly; it was a favorite of his niece’s. Charity loved the talking Pickle. Pete? Paul? Pat? Pablo? He couldn’t remember the pickle’s name. It was alliterative, he knew that.

But the Pickle coats wouldn’t be here in time to serve the needs of the wet children of the northwestern United States.

“A strike,” he imagined saying to his boss. “Beyond our control. A strike. Who’d a guessed?”

The third note was from his wife. She was ovulating. They were trying to conceive. They were failing. Had failed for eighteen months now. Every month a strike out. The moment she said she felt PMS coming on, Max felt like a fool. Worthless. He’d never had problems with his masculine identity before. Now he felt…hollow. Not castrated or emasculated. Just empty.

Her time was right. He needed to come home for lunch.

“No,” he said again. It was a forty minute commute. He had an hour for lunch. The math didn’t add up. Why didn’t Jenny know that? Desperation was clouding her brain. Every time they visited his sister and saw Charity, now a bubbly three-year-old, Jenny would come home and cry for an hour. Max couldn’t console her. He didn’t know the right words. Everything he said made her shoulders lurch and shudder and her breath catch again. It used to be he could joke Jenny into a smile. He couldn’t anymore.

Max heard the elevator ding and footsteps in the hall behind him. Lydia called hello and he said hello back without turning around. Lydia was a systems analyst, almost always the other early morning arrival, unless one of the many dachshunds she raised decided to get sick or run away or commit some other doggy delinquency. Then she’d roll in with a dachshund story. Most days she called hello and went right to her cubicle.

Max read the fourth message. Change Now, it said. Or Else.

“Screw you,” Max said and tapped the delete key with a forceful finger.

The message disappeared.

Over the course of the morning, as Max silently composed a speech for his boss — ”A dockworker’s strike is like lightning, sir. Now one can tell where it’ll hit. No one saw it coming,” he’d say, though the supplier in Asia had been hinting at the possibility for weeks. Or: “It’s going to be over in a jiffy, boss. The union’ll cave.  No doubt about it,” though he’d read no such thing. Max’s knowledge of Asian dockworkers’ unions was sketchy, at best. He knew they worked on docks. He knew they were Asian. He tried to imagine an Asian Terry Malloy, an Asian Rod Steiger.

His own experience with docks was limited to a girl he dated in high school whose father owned a sailboat and where she had led him one Friday night, to her father’s boat moored in a private slip, and where they’d made out, drinking her father’s booze and getting mildly queasy from the swaying and the alcohol and his frustrated teen-age lust. He hadn’t used her name as a password yet (Bridget) or the name of the boat. He remembered it clearly, Well Past Time. Well past time for what, he wondered now, but not then.  Well past time for a ship? For a trip? Well past time to let that memory go, Max considered. He’d brought a rubber with him that night, though he hadn’t used it. He didn’t know he was shooting blanks then. Think of all the money he could have saved over the years on contraception. Perhaps thousands of dollars and countless embarrassing trips to drugstores and supermarkets. He didn’t really know if he was shooting blanks. Jenny suggested a trip to a fertility specialist, but he balked at the expected images: a lobby of strangers, a nurse handing him a cup, a cramped bathroom, a pile of well-thumbed porno mags. It wasn’t appealing, but Jenny wanted to pinpoint their problem.

“We can’t fix,” she said, “what we don’t know, Max.”

It was well past time they figured it out, he imagined her saying. Well past time.

At eleven-thirty his wife sent another note. “I’m waiting,” she wrote.  “Let’s get busy.”

He was already busy. His boss had phoned, said he was stopping by his son’s elementary school to see a play. It would only take an hour, his son had a few lines — ”He’s a tree,” his boss had said. “A freakin’ tree. But my wife told me she’d skin me alive if I didn’t make the effort. I’m making the effort. See, Max, I’m making the effort. You’re goddamn lucky you don’t have kids, Max. Don’t ever do it, Max. I love my son, but kids throw wrenches into everything. It’s raining fucking wrenches. It is rainy, Max.” Max heard a pause on the other end of the line.  “Where are the Pickle coats?”

Max was fortunate the cell phone reception deteriorated just then.

“I’ll be in by noon, Max,” his boss said through chunky static. “Noon.”

At eleven-forty his e-mail message center throbbed again.

“Jenny,” he cursed. “I can’t.”

But the note wasn’t from her.

Your password has expired, he read.

“Big whup,” he said.

He deleted it.

His mailbox throbbed.

CHANGE, the next note said. All caps were rude. He deleted that one, too.

Lydia asked if he wanted anything from the deli downstairs. She always asked. Most days he declined. He wasn’t hungry at all. Lydia scolded him for not eating properly.

“Not today,” Max said. “Don’t get on me today. I’m getting enough as it is.”

Lydia’s mouth curved down. She wasn’t one to show her emotions, but he could tell she was hurt. She turned on her short heels and he listened as she punched the down button with more force than usual. He expected her to say, “Fine,” under her breath, the way Jenny would if he’d pissed her off, but Lydia was silent. He could have dealt with a sharp “Fine.” Silence was worse. But why should he eat when he wasn’t hungry, when he was nearly nauseous because a throng of poorly-paid Taiwanese wanted a raise and better hours? Would a bagel and cream cheese cure any of his problems?

He didn’t budge. The elevator came and went and took Lydia’s sulking with it.

The red flag on his mailbox icon waved like Old Glory on the Fourth of July. He could actually see it whip in the electronic wind. Flap, flap, flap. He remembered the sound of empty halyards on the sailboats in the harbor, the high clang of metal on metal. Walking down the steps of the Well Past Time — to the bar, to the bed, he imagined, to paradise, he listened to them clang. The dinging punctuated the whole evening.  He opened the new note with the songs of vacant masts still in his mind.

Your old house on Mulberry Avenue — Mulberry1226, to us — burned to the ground last night, the message said. The police are saying the cause was suspicious but may have been faulty wiring. What do you think, Max? You loved that house. Especially the laundry chute in your sister’s room. You dropped all sorts of things down that chute. Tennis balls, GI Joes, a fountain pen. That made a mess. You’ll miss that house.

Max shook his head and read the note again. The elevator doors whined behind him. Others were going to lunch. He heard chatter. Debate about the merits of tacos versus subs.

We told you to change.

His e-mail throbbed again. The red flag waved.

Remember LeRoy2Gone? Your wife didn’t want to put that dog down. She cried in the parking lot of the humane society for twenty minutes before she led Leroy to his death. She’s never quite forgiven you, Max. Do you think she should?

Max swiveled in his rolling chair. He looked at the ceiling. He glanced to each wall of his cubicle. This was a prank. A bad prank. And the dog was dying. He hadn’t given the dog cancer. (He hadn’t been particularly sympathetic either. He knew. He regretted.) There had to be cameras. He was the victim of a practical joke. He was on some television show.

Nothing was noticeably different. The same photos of Jenny were tacked to the cubicle’s stiff fabric sides. His Sierra Club calendar. A crayon drawing of Charity’s — a two-story house with a green lawn and red flowers up the walk. Smoke wafting from the chimney. Clearly, Charity didn’t have a handle on seasons yet. Summer outside, winter inside. You can’t have smoke and flowers.

He deleted the messages and wiped sweat from his forehead, though the building was always set to a comfortable seventy-two degrees. It never fluctuated.

The elevator chimed and he spun in his chair.

“Max. My office in five,” his boss said, the tall man’s stride taking him swiftly past Max’s cubicle and to the glass walls of his private room.

“Yes, sir,” Max said.

His boss paused at his open door. “Two lines, Max,” he said, holding up his right hand and flashing a V. From anyone else it would have meant peace or victory. “Two lines. Welcome to our forest and We grow with rain and light. That’s it.” He shut the door and moments later Max watched the blinds flip closed. They swayed a bit and were still.

It was always a bad sign when the boss went for privacy.

Max’s mailbox was full again.

“It’s almost noon and if you can read this, it means you’re still at work. I suppose we can wait until you get home this evening, Max, but my temperature is just right and I feel it, Max, I feel it. Now is the time. I’m looking out the window as I type this. I hope I see your car pull up the drive. I’m watching. I’m waiting, Max. Your Jenny.”

Max didn’t delete that one. He didn’t file it in the folder marked Jenny. He didn’t know what to do with it.

Another message appeared. Unless you change your password this instant, you will never have the ability to access your incoming mail box ever again. Not ever. We promise. This is not a vague threat, buster. Without your mail, you’re screwed. See if you can get the Pickle coats now. Without us, without the power we give you, you’re royally screwed.

There was a postscript. Wise up, bub. Passwords protect.

Max smacked his armrest and sent the casters on his chair rolling. He slipped off the edge of the cushioned seat. His knee hit the edge of his plastic-and-pressboard desk and he let out a squelched yowl. He clapped his hand over his mouth — realizing that no one really claps a hand over his own mouth, not ever, except in movies, old movies, and here he was, moaning, and swearing behind his own hot palm. He was a parody, but he wasn’t even sure of what. He was an unintelligible parody. Man with hurt knee. Man with irritable boss. Man with insistent, pleading wife. Man with a million Asian dockworkers holding up his order, his order alone among all others, letting everything else go free — cheap suits and furniture and golf balls and satchels — but not his Pickle coats.

“Wretched,” he said as if it were a common curse. “Wretched.” He kicked his chair and it rolled backward to the hallway and came to rest against the elevator door.

It opened and there stood Lydia, her red mouth an O of surprise, her eyes wide behind black-framed glasses. She held a bottle of orange juice in one hand by her side. The other arm she extended. She held out a thick bagel in a thin white paper napkin.

“Max,” she said. “I thought you needed something.”

He looked at her and nodded. He walked to her and took the bagel. Bits of sesame seed flicked off the crust and onto the pale blue carpet.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.” He took a bite and walked to his boss’s office. He chewed and then turned back, his hand on the door’s handle. Lydia was leaning out of the elevator, her head floating above his chair, her chin turned in his direction.

“Thank you,” he said, probably too loud.

“No problem,” she responded.

Max opened the door and stepped inside the dim room. His boss was behind his broad walnut desk, the shiny top littered with brass: a globe paperweight, a clock, a slim and sharp letter opener. “Tell me about the coats, Max.”

And Max did. He explained the strike. He described the delay — perhaps a day, perhaps a week, perhaps a month, how was Max to know? He hadn’t a crystal ball. Max explained and chewed his dry lunch and let sesame seeds rain on the boss’s better carpet, better than the one in the hall. A richer Berber, a better blue. His boss listened, his eyebrows poised high on his head, a pair of steep arches over his dark eyes.

“So we’ve missed this opportunity, Max,” his boss said.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” Max said, popping the last of the bagel into his mouth. “This time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” his boss said and Max understood, perhaps.  The rain would end and the children would dry out and the Pickle coats would remain unsold, gathering dust in silent warehouses and on the rickety tables of discount clothing stores. Another cartoon character would hold sway over the offspring of America. That ship had sailed and Max and his boss and Bender Incorporated hadn’t made a dime. Or maybe it meant Max just lost his job. His next time was done. Max didn’t stay to find out. His boss waved his hand and Max left the dark room and closed the door behind him. The blinds swayed again.

He marched to his cubicle — someone had returned his chair, most likely Lydia — but he didn’t sit down. He bent over the gently humming machine and typed a reply.

My new password is Neveragain.

He tapped his foot and waited for an answer.

Your password must contain a mix of letters, digits, and/or symbols.

Neveragain1.

Thank you. He expected more, an insult, a threat. But no. This is what he got: That’s all we ever wanted, Max. An effort.

His finger hovered, waited, and hit delete.

His mailbox pulsed. Ah, he thought. Here it comes.

Yet this is what he read: “Dear Max. Come home. Forget why. Just…I miss you. That’s why. Your Jenny.”

Max stood straight and brushed bits of bagel off his shirt. He slid the mouse around and turned off his computer. He didn’t need any more mail.

Max was going home to make a baby. He didn’t know if it would work, but he’d try his best. He and Jenny would try, dead dogs and burned houses behind them. He didn’t know the magic words. He didn’t know the right prayer or oath or password. He only knew the question: how do you get it right? What sort of code did he need to use to get it right just this once? That was the password he needed. He didn’t know if it was love or please or now or it’s well past time, but he felt it all and would try to say it, in the right combination, whatever would work to unlock that door and let him and Jenny in: love and please and now and it was well past time.

About the Author

John A. McDermott has been a bad bartender, a worse house painter, a fairly good copywriter, and a better actor. Now he teaches creative writing and American literature at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. A proud native of Madison, Wisconsin, hes not much of a Texan, but his students understand. His stories have appeared in a variety of journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, Meridian, Southeast Review, and Zahir.

“How Candle Girl and V Took On 2MB”
by Gord Sellar

It was two long months of candlelight demonstrations in Seoul.

They began on May 2nd. The only blockage the police erected then was a flimsy perimeter round the protest area. But soon, downtown Seoul would fall into a nightly ritual of lockdown at sunset: the adjacent road leading to the Presidential Blue House were blockaded with dozens of grill-windowed “chicken cage” buses from around sundown until early morning. The day protests peaked, on June 10th¹, they switched to stacks of greased and sand-filled shipping containers, but this overt symbol of economic globalization egged some protesters on, and waves of ridicule convinced them to switch back to using buses the next day.² Riot police — mostly college boys doing mandatory military service — were constantly present: holed up in or behind the buses, marching in phalanx, sometimes being pummeled by protesters, and more often doing the pummeling.³ (And sometimes, during lulls, meeting their girlfriends in nearby coffeeshops.) Decontextualized images appeared online, fruiting memes: rampant police brutality, radical demonstrator violence.⁴

It’s harder to describe the protesters. The rallies varied, sometimes utterly different from day to day, but they began gently. The evening of May 2nd felt like a street festival, a lively crowd chanting and singing with chotbul — candles shrouded in paper cups — in hand. Immediately, left- and right-wing media alike exaggerated the involvement of children in the movement, spinning fantasies of cynical child-exploitation or precocious futurist heroism. In reality, people from all walks of life, and of all ages — grandparents, office workers, pregnant women, and, yes, teenagers — had gathered, even on that first night. The crowds had chanted denunciations of the Korean media and their new President — beseeching both to “wake up,” and decrying both as “garbage” — but they seemed less enraged or frightened than determined and optimistic, and hopeful that their President might listen to what they were saying.

They were talking about beef imports, and concessions he’d made regarding U.S. beef import regulations. Mad cow disease was a focal concern. “You eat madcow!” they ordered the President. It had the look of something bound to fizzle out in a week or two, one among many such protests here. Nobody guessed it would last over two months, paralyzing the government, that sometimes hundreds of thousands would march, that Catholic clergy, urging nonviolence, would lead Buddhists and Protestants into the fray, or that the discussion would dominate news, the Korean Internet, and classrooms.

It wasn’t just about beef, though. This stew roiled and bubbled with political frustrations and fears. Also, certainly, a dash of nostalgia for the thrill of mass solidarity: hordes of red-clad Team Korea supporters had flooded the very same streets⁵ during the World Cup soccer tournament of 2002 to cheer, chant, and synchro-dance to looping techno too — though, this time, the lyrics were taken from the National Constitution, repeatedly declaring: “South Korea is a democratic nation….”

And another, subtler ingredient distinctly flavored this stew: a blend of SF and fantasy tropes, retooled for Korean society, which defined the rise and fall of this movement.

Michin So

If you want a picture of what terrified Koreans about US beef, imagine a nation with a hoof stomping on it — forever.

And then picture a manically-grinning Korean politician riding on the back of that stomping michin so (”mad cow”), wearing a cowboy hat. It’s oddly cartoon-like, this image, but it drew thousands onto the streets.

Food is a huge deal in Korean society. People talk about food all the time. How hungry or full they are; whether this or that is delicious or not; what and when and where they’re craving. One common greeting in Korean is, “Have you eaten?” Food shows are popular on TV, and no Korean film is complete without characters sharing a meal.

Traditional, essentially magical, concepts still linger. “Long” foods, like eel, are considered good for men’s sexual “stamina.” Kids are given sticky foods before tests so memorized answers will “stick” in their minds. News reports routinely boast of “scientific proof” that kimchi, the emblematic Korean side dish, can fend off everything from SARS and bird flu to stomach cancer. Part of this mythology dictates that locally-produced foodstuffs are somehow healthier for Koreans than imports. Although not universal, this belief is widespread enough to help keep Korean foodstuffs on the market despite cheaper competition, like imported Australian beef. 

My point isn’t how wacky those gosh-darned Koreans are. It’s just that food has a special importance in Korean culture, one unparalleled in America. Between food and politics, there’s no contest: political apathy has spread like crabgrass since democracy supplanted dictatorship in the late 1980s. Participation in the last election was among the lowest of any since democracy was achieved here.

Soon after Lee Myung Bak was inaugurated as President of South Korea, his approval ratings collapsed. One reason (of many) was a decision he’d made as the Seoul’s mayor — not to bother with proper security — contributed to the incineration of a major, treasured national monument called Namdaemun (”The Great South Gate”)⁶ by a madman, only a week before Lee took office. His characteristically callous response didn’t help matters.

As the monument goes, so goes the nation. Korean society takes inauspicious metonymy seriously. The national mood darkened; doom lurked on the horizon. Still, even then, only one thing could overcome the apathy and launch a sudden, mass political movement… a narrative about food.

Mad Cow, Mad Science, & Mad Scientists

PD Diary is a tabloid TV show, specializing in moral panic over “illicit” foreigner-Korean sex, territorial disputes with Japan , ridiculous urban legends like “fan death.”⁷ Sometimes, they get things right: PD Diary outed Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, Korea’s fraudulent stem-cell researcher. But often, it’s just tabloid TV.

On April 29th, 2008, PD Diaryaired an episode⁸ that was a recipe for panic, combining dystopianism, SF and fantasy tropes, and urban legends to get the political stew roiling furiously. After building a (sham) case upon mistranslations and outright deceptions “proving” a BSE epidemic among American cattle, and a hidden epidemic of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in America, they unveiled their last, horrifying piece of “evidence.” It was a scientific paper by Korean researchers led by Hallym University’s Dr. Jeong Byeong Hun that they claimed “proved” that 94% of Koreans were especially vulnerable to vCJD, because of a genetic predisposition determining how most Koreans synthesize amino acids.

It may sound bizarre, but it caught on for a reason: when Korean education was being rebuilt after the Japanese occupation, a new national consciousness was created upon a myth of racial identity.⁹ To this day, it echoes in classrooms: We Koreans are of one blood. We have withstood foreign invasions since time immemorial. Little surprise that the idea of a racial susceptibility to distinctly foreign contagion resonated so powerfully.

By the time Dr. Jeong’s criticism of the misrepresentations  came to light, it was too late: many imaginations, and protest-candles, were already aflame. Horrific visions  of an insidious plague haunted the nation, sickness hibernating not only in meat, but in anything made with meat byproducts: choco-pies, tampons, soda-crackers, donuts. Slow death, invited by government policy! It was like something out of a dystopian SF movie…

V for… Victory?

On June 5th, about a month into the demonstrations, a group of my media students presented their final course-project: a clever mashup juxtaposing clips from the Wachowski Brothers’ film V for Vendetta widely circulated protest footage shot by demonstrators.¹⁰

President Lee was recast as Chancellor Sutler, and Korean protesters merged with the crowd of masked citizens at the film’s climax. Hilarious at moments — the parody of Lee’s haughty dismissal of public criticism is priceless — the overall effect turns chilling with footage of police violence in late May: water cannons slamming people onto the ground (causing skull fractures and brain hemorrhages, injuries the chief of police declared were “impossible”).¹¹ Injured students. A boot stomping a girl’s head.

V was in the air; my fiancée had noticed the film cropping up in netizen discussions of the protests even in late May — a pattern that continues even now. By July 5th, the last big demonstration, two groups showed in costume — one in plastic Guy Fawkes masks, the other wearing paper printouts held up with string. By all accounts — even unsympathetic ones — their approach was dramatic, as with participants in the recent, well-publicized protests of the Church of Scientology by “Anonymous.”¹²

V was not received by these protesters as the anarchist figure of the Moore comic (which has not, anyway, been translated into Korean), but as the romantic, anti-Bush, and clearly anti-authoritarian Hollywood hero. Lee is no dictator, but for many his political party’s genealogy leads back to South Korea’s brutal past; Lee’s direct competition for the Korean Grand National Party’s 2007 presidential nomination was none other than the daughter of Park Chung-Hee, dictator of South Korea from 1961-1979. Lee’s patronizing demeanour did nothing to dispel the link between him and the film’s dictator, Chancellor Sutler.

It’s not even V himself that captured protesters’ imaginations: rather, it was the film’s climactic moment when the frightened, apathetic public finally rose up, donned Guy Fawkes masks, and marched to the British Parliament. It’s ironic: in V, the dictator manufactured public fear of a plague to take control of his nation. In Korea, fear of foreign contagion mobilized people, politicized them and got them out into the streets.

More ironically, members of this nationalist protest movement consciously adopted iconography from another American import — a Hollywood SF film. They could instead easily have referenced images from the 2006 Korean blockbuster The Host, which told the story of a poor family fighting an all-consuming mutant monster and a lying, deceitful government intent on keeping up appearances. Or they could have referenced last year’s political-tearjerker May 18, about the 1980 Kwangju Massacre of pro-democracy protesters. Yet, to articulate their criticisms, young demonstrators turned to specifically American pop culture, as if to reiterate what many individuals told me, assuming I was American: it’s not about your country, and it’s not really just about beef either.

2MB vs. Candle Girl

All told, V remained a minor character. If the protests in Seoul were a video game, the iconic protagonist was Candle Girl, a cute little-kid mascot in a blue school uniform with a protester’s candle gripped in one hand.¹³ And the Megaboss she battled against was 2MB, the grinning Korean President, riding upon a pale madcow.

The nickname “2MB” appeared online long before the protests, but was popularized on the street. In Korean, the words for “two” and “Lee” are homophones, so 2MB is a pun on Lee’s initials, disparaging his mental “disk space.”

It’s a cyber-putdown for a cyber-generation, a part of Korea’s first technoprotest ever: from an impeachment poll launched by a teenager before the protests began¹⁴, to the mass-emailed and phone-texted messages that facilitated demo-flashmobs, Korea’s considerable wireless and internet telecom infrastructure defined these protests. Literature and poster icons were disseminated online; decentralized websites hosted debates, organization discussions, and advertised plans and organization¹⁵; protesters relied on online newsreports; events were webcast live to audiences of millions thanks to college kids armed with laptops and videocams; online photography clubs volunteered to document police brutality; online fund-raising drives self-organized to feed demonstrators; at one point, hackers even defaced Lee’s GNP website with a picture of a dancing cat, a reference to another of Lee’s epithets, jwi — “rat.”¹⁶

Everywhere — on T-shirts, posters, banners, and signs — was the slogan “LEE MYUNG BAK OUT.” (Often, as “2MB OUT.”) It was a call for impeachment…. sort of. Some people earnestly demanded impeachment, but others seemed to be using a tactic common to Korean culture, one I learned haggling in street markets: ask for more than you can really get. Many I talked to considered impeachment unrealistic, or at least highly unlikely. What they said they wanted was for Lee to take public opinion seriously.

Understandably so, considering Lee’s response to criticism: queried by journalists about his beef policy changes, he joked at one point that he “must’ve done it in his sleep.” He seriously asked of demonstrators, “Who paid for the candles?”¹⁷ But, then, the Korea he’d been working on constructing was one where common people probably couldn’tafford candles; a nation gutted of public services, thoroughly privatized, a relentlessly neoliberal Korea.

The wealthy ex-CEO Lee was elected because people hoped he would “save the economy.” Yet even many Lee supporters were dubious about his project proposals: switching public education over to English-language instruction; privatizing health insurance and water; building a transpeninsular transport canal bound for economic and ecological disaster. Many felt Lee’s governing style was toomuch like a CEO’s,. By June, his approval ratings had dropped to 17%¹⁸.

Back when he was mayor of Seoul, Lee decided — apparently without consulting the millions of Buddhists, atheists, and other non-Christians in the city — to “dedicate” the city to God and declare its citizens “God’s People.”¹⁹

2MB’s opponents, obviously, held no monopoly on grandiose fantasy.

The Aftermath

The roads are now clear of all but a small core of diehard activists, and though they continue to gather semi-regularly, the mass movement behind the anti-2MB demonstrations has dissolved… for now. Legal proceedings have begun²⁰, concessions have been made, and the streets are (mostly) quiet. No longer do young women joke about trying the “chotbuldiet” plan. The food stands and devil-horn vendors have moved on, and the candles have mostly been extinguished. Fear of US beef is waning, and the masses have gone back to their daily lives.

Protest organizers have been accused of manipulating public fears. However true this is, it smacks of the pot calling the kettle black. Public fear of U.S. beef were exacerbated, from the beginning, but the protest organizers weren’t the only manipulators. Protesters denounced Korea’s biggest newspapers as manipulative “trash.” Within a week of the last big rally, two major newspapers were forced to apologize for staging photos that accompanied  stories claiming the tide of US beef fears having turned already.²¹ There’s blame enough to go around: Lee’s patronizing attitude, police violence, a minority of violent, extremist radicals, and corrupt media across the political spectrum.

Korean SF fans are, predictably, seeing things a little differently. The “Politique” column of Korea’s biggest SF magazine, Fantastique²², was abuzz this summer, ranging from discussions of the use of “zombie” imagery to describe both protesters and the threat of vCJD, exploring the dangers of an Avian Influenza H5N1 pandemic²³, and stressing the positive power of “rumors” or “fears” to awaken and overcome “blind” government-urged complacency and raise public concern over other potential disease outbreaks like SARS and H5N1.

Perhaps it’s no accident that the National Film Archive recently ran a retrospective on Korean gwaesu (giant monster) movies. Watching gargantuan monstrosities attack both Seoul and tiny villages, images of the protests ran through my mind. The threat posed by the rampaging horrors in all of these films seemed to be exacerbated by the inept, stupid, or arrogant government and military officials “handling” the situation.

Most resonant with the protests was the conclusion of the Korean monster movie The Host. The scene set up a sequel — though apparently the upcoming 2009 release will be a prequel set during Lee’s stint as mayor of Seoul²⁴ — but it also captures the mood of many who participated in the biggest mass demonstrations. After the rampaging monster has been taken down, the protagonist goes on with his life, but remains wary, staring out into the gloomy darkness of the river from which the beast once emerged. President Lee may not (quite) be a mutant horror risen from the Han River, but many, though once again at home and relaxing, are even now gazing out their windows toward the Blue House with similar wariness.

Will there be a sequel to 2MB vs. Candlegirl? In the immediate future, it seems unlikely: the weather’s terribly hot these days, and other political crises loom, especially the current flare-up of a long-running territorial dispute with Japan. The masses seem critical of the hardcore protesters who remain active. Still, if Lee does risk another round at the joystick, we can be sure he’ll have new tricks up his sleeve.

Though he may not realize it, so will the people. They’ve beaten harder games than this before, taken down a much worse megaboss than Lee. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my visits to PC-bangs here, it’s that when they play a game, Koreans play to win.

ENDNOTES:

1. Police estimated 80,000 participants, while organizers estimated half a million. Neither number is reasonably reliable, though perhaps the average of the two estimates might be closer to the truth.

2. The shipping containers were dubbed Myungbaksanseong — “[President Lee] Myung Bak’s Fortress” by netizens, and the term was popularized in newspapers soon after.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6veMEKUomY&locale=en_US&persist_locale=1

4. http://photo.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2008/06/27/2008062700184.html

5. Indeed, these same streets have been the site of many important social and political events for more than a century. See here for more: http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2008/06/protests-public-space-in-seoul-and.html

6. Namdaemun’s proper name, Sungnyemun, suddenly was in vogue, but only after its incineration. http://www.nowpublic.com/world/south-koreas-top-national-treasure-was-burnt-down

7. http://www.fandeath.net/

8. http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2008/06/pd-diarys-tradition-of-ethical.html

9. See Chapter 2 of Michael J. Seth’s Education Fever: Society, Politics, and The Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002).

10. http://youtube.com/watch?v=fYgNQ6JX6cA

11. An M.D. friend of my fiancée treated one of water cannon victims for brain hemorrhage, and when she reported it online, the story was widely read and taken by many as a refutation Seoul Police Chief’s claims. Many more people suffered from ruptured tympanic membranes, and video documentation and eyewitness testimony suggest that the water cannons were sometimes improperly used. Online fundraising began immediately to help pay for those protester surgeries, especially for teenagers who could not afford it. Angry protesters and netizens responded to the Chief of Police’s claim that the water cannon could not cause serious harm by suggesting that he ought to use one as a bidet.

12. http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/02/11/vlog-xeni-anonymous.html

13. http://cafe.daum.net/candlegirls

14. http://agora.media.daum.net/petition/view?id=40221

15. http://michincow.net/, http://cafe.daum.net/candlegirls, http://cafe.daum.net/antimb

16. http://www.gordsellar.com/2008/06/01/the-day-the-ruling-partys-website-went-offline/

17. When the protests began, Lee was visiting China. When he returned home and government officials attempted to inform him of the situation, he reportedly said, “I know, I know, I use the Internet too. But tell me one thing: who bought all the candles?” Protestors replied with retorts such  as, “Sure! It’s the candle manufacturers that are behind us!”

18. http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/newsview_sub.php?menu=2&key=2008060407

19. Indeed, many have argued that one reason Lee won the Presidency was his mobilization of Protestant Christians in his favor. Lee has associated with those who pray for the Buddhist temples in Korea to crumble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Myung_Bak#Christianity), and indeed a newer map of Seoul issued by his government has, bizarrely, omitted all references to Buddhist temples (http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200806/200806240026.html). Few believe this was really a “mistake.” Buddhist participation in the protests surged toward the end of June, and, indeed, unlike in the democracy movement of 1987 — where organizers took sanctuary in Myeongdong Cathedral — those facing arrest in 2008 took refuge in the nearby Chogye Buddhist Temple. (http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2924/)

20. http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=383005&rel_no=1

21. http://www.gordsellar.com/2008/07/10/fake-beef-consumers-media-failsafes-and-medias-future/

22. “Politique.” Fantastique, Vol 14-16 (June-August 2008). Excerpts are currently available online, in Korean, for June and July (http://fantastique.co.kr/issue/issue_special_view.asp?num=83).

23. Understandably so: just in May 2008 there were indeed two major outbreaks among poultry of Avian Influenza H5N1 in the area of Seoul. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/may1208seoul.html

24. As reported at ScifiJapan, the scriptwriter is a famous Korean webcomic artist known as Kangfull, among whose works is a comic titled 26 Years that imagines a group of assassins who seek to avenge democracy protesters (and presumably loved ones) killed in the Kwangju Massacre by killing the dictator of the time, Chun Doo Hwan. (Incidentally, Chun is still alive in Seoul today, but with considerable security expenses.) The script, reportedly set in the same place as the first 2MB demonstrations were held — an urban stream that Lee “revivified” rapidly, and thus turned into an artificial, electricity-consuming, ecological mess, ostensibly for the sake of his political legacy — may well be less than generous with the President’s political legacy.

About the Author

Gord Sellar was born in Malawi but raised in Canada. He has lived in South Korea since 2002, where he has taught at universities, played saxophone in an indie-rock band, worked as an editor and co-translator, and started a study group focused on Ezra Pound’s The Cantos. He is currently studying of what appears to be an ongoing science-fiction renaissance in South Korea, as well as the historical reception of the genre there. He attended Clarion West in 2006, was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009, and his fiction has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Interzone, Tesseracts Twelve, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 26 (edited by Gardner Dozois), and with more work forthcoming in, among other places, Subterranean and Diet Soap.

“Margo Lanagan and Tender Morsels”
by Jeff VanderMeer

Despite having already published several novels, Australian writer Margo Lanagan first came into focus in most readers’ minds with the publication of World Fantasy Award-winning collection Black Juice (2004) and its signature story, “Singing My Sister Down.” Since then, she has published another collection, Red Spikes, which was named a Publishers Weekly book of the year and a Horn Book Fanfare. Her latest novel, Tender Morsels (Knopf, October), is a tour de force of sustained narrative, weaving folktale with brutal reality. Teenage mother Liga, abused by her father and others, escapes to her own alternate world, only to be followed by wild bears and other dangers that threaten her safety. From there, the reader is drawn into a rich, original story that sometimes cloaks itself in the familiar but is at its heart deeply strange in the best possible way. I would very surprised if Tender Morsels did not make several year’s best lists and awards ballots, as the novel recalls such masters as Angela Carter and Rikki Ducornet, while being intensely Lanagan’s own.

I interviewed Lanagan about Tender Morsels via email in September of this year.

Who is the tender morsel?

The most obvious tender morsels are the daughters, Branza and Urdda, and the dwarf Collaby Dought indicates this when he’s just about to be eaten by a bear, pushing the girls forward and saying ‘There is nothing of me but a scrap of leather! Please, my lord, have these!…So plump, so tender! Full of juice and fat! They will make a fine meal for you!’

Less obviously, Lisa is a tender morsel too, devoured by her beastly father and by the town boys. Even less obviously, all the women are tender morsels, at the mercy of the men’s beastlier instincts as well as being protected and prized by them.

Joining them in their vulnerability to abuse are the children of the town, Vivius Strap’s donkey, the wild bears when a party of hunters is after them, and every horse, dog, sheep and goat that comes under the control of a human being. 

The novel is told in very distinctive voices. How difficult was that to maintain throughout?

Easy-peasy, once I got it going. The trouble was not writing in it when I moved on to other things! 

No, the narrative voice was there pretty much from the first scene I wrote (which remains as the first scene of chapter 1, the first miscarriage scene). And then, just when I thought it was all getting a bit smoothly flowing and pleasant, Collaby Dought introduced himself, and he was so rude and greedy and blunt and funny, he refreshed the whole story. [Then] I had Bullock take over that role of the ungrammatical but very straightforward speaker, and Muddy Annie’s dialogue was also in that vein. 

But I always wanted the story to feel like a fairytale, and the main third-person narration I wanted to have the weird combination of privileged knowledge and slight distance, slight hovering-over the subjects’ lives and stories, slight objectivity, that traditional oral-based stories often have. 

Right from the opening lines, this is a very “adult” YA novel. Do you think about audience when you write a book like this?

I try to think less about audience than I used to. With this one, though, I was conscious, mostly as I wrote the first couple of chapters where all the awful sexual stuff happens (oh, and the good sex of the prologue), that it was likely to be marketed somewhere as YA, so I was careful (a) to warn people straight up with the first sentence (’There are plenty would call her a slut for it.’) and (b) to glide without description over the very worst parts of the assaults on Liga. You never see the details of her being raped by her father, and there is a big jump-cut past her rape by the town boys. This way, readers who want to preserve something of their innocence can glide right with me; they know that something awful happened, but they don’t have to watch either event as Muddy Annie says, ‘from first fumble to last thrust and drizzle’. Less innocent readers will have to endure the images their imaginations throw up at them, and may not even realise that I only suggested them, didn’t actually draw them on the page. 

Some people think this is your first novel, although it most definitely is not. Can you tell us a little about your other novels, and are they only available in Australia, or…?

Quite a lot of those novels are my apprenticeship novels, teenage romances written pseudonymously in the early 1990s. There are also three junior fantasies, WildGame, The Tankermen and Walking Through Albert, published 1991, 1992 and 1998, and two naturalistic YA novels set in Sydney, The Best Thing and Touching Earth Lightly, published 1995 and 1996. With the Internet, nothing is only available in Australia any more, and if you should happen to want the YA novels in Dutch, German or Italian, they’re available too. But I should warn you, there is a woeful absence of technology any more sophisticated than a VCR and a landline telephone. 

You deal with issues in your fiction that some people find controversial, like sex, abuse, etc. But I don’t get the sense that you set out to be controversial. Are you surprised when people find something controversial in your fiction?

Not really; I know the parts of life that I like to explore in fiction are often the parts that many people don’t like to even look at, let alone spend time wondering about, so I have to expect the occasional knee-jerk reaction. 

But really, compared to the movies and just your normal day’s worth of free-to-air television, my stories are quite tame. I sometimes think it’s just easier to attack a book, because it isn’t backed up by so much money and celebrity power, than it is to complain about a movie or TV show you think is showing sex or violence too graphically. The movie/TV powers-that-be tend to shrug and say, ‘Well, no one’s forcing you to watch,’ but the same rule rarely seems to be quoted in relation to books — their simple presence, their availability, say, in a school library, is enough to have some people *cough*Ms Palin*cough* foaming at the mouth. 

To what extent does living in Australia influence your fiction? Some would claim that when you write fantasy the place in which you live is at best expressed in your fiction indirectly…

This is a big, rich question. In terms of Tender Morsels…Well, I was just about to say, this is not Australia, this is some kind of fairytale Eastern Europe, but in fact you don’t have to look very hard at this book to find the kind of boofhead male behaviour Australia has something of a reputation for, so maybe my homeland is making itself felt that way. 

Then you could start drawing all sorts of parallels about St Olafred’s being the centre of commerce and politics and power and Liga’s cottage being all isolated and remote down there in the valley — but then you’d be getting silly. 

I don’t know that this is a question that can be answered from the inside. There are some US readers who say they can see a characteristic ‘Australian-ness’ in my stories, but I don’t really know what they’re talking about. People tend to fixate a little on this, and spot Australianisms where they don’t exist; for example, assuming that any strange turn of phrase they encounter is something characteristically Australian, when in fact, you know, I’m a writer, I make things up. Or that any dark-skinned person in a story is Aboriginal; generally my dark-skinned people are just dark-skinned people. 

Why do you write? And what would happen if you stopped writing?

I write because, when I was pushing thirty, I decided that, as I had no burning ambition to do anything in particular, I needed to choose an activity to focus on that I could possibly develop into a career, but that was also rewarding in itself. I think perhaps I concentrated too hard on the career-development aspect for a while; these days it’s primarily the reward-in-itself that I try to keep foremost in my mind as I write. 

If I stopped writing, I’d have to find some other outlet for this vast backlog of ideas I’ve accumulated. I’d probably collage, and maybe take the WD-40 to my drawing skills. 

What about the world do you most love?

The fact that I’m not here by myself.

About the Author

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning writer with books published in over 20 countries. He has collaborated on short films with rock groups like The Church, has had his fiction adapted for promotional purposes by Playstation Europe (by filmmaker Joel Veitch), and writes for the Amazon book blog, io9, New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post, among others.

Jeffs novel Finch and writing book, Booklife, are forthcoming this fall.