TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 163 (December 2023)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: December 2023

SCIENCE FICTION

Carbon Zero
D. Thomas Minton

Dandelions
Martin Cahill

Seed
Adam-Troy Castro

Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell
Andrea Kriz

FANTASY

Whispers From the Sea
Oyedotun Damilola Muees

We’ll Never Die in the Woods
Carlie St. George

To the Waters and the Wild
Izzy Wasserstein

Mindfulness and the Machine
A.T. Greenblatt

EXCERPTS

Escape Velocity
Victor Manibo

NONFICTION

Book Review: Skin Thief by Suzan Palumbo
Arley Sorg

Book Review: The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw
Aigner Loren Wilson

Book Review: Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne Gilman
Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

D. Thomas Minton

Carlie St. George

Izzy Wasserstein

A.T. Greenblatt

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2023 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Warmtail / Adobe Stock Images

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

Editorial: December 2023

John Joseph Adams | 274 words

Welcome to issue 163 of Lightspeed Magazine! 2023 has been a tough year for short fiction magazines, especially with the demise of the Kindle Periodicals program, where many readers sourced their subscriptions. We’re so grateful to every reader who has changed their subscription over to Weightless or our storefront! Wonderful readers like you all are the reason we keep doing this work.

We’re starting this month off with “Carbon Zero” by D. Thomas Minton, a new story of a terrifying near-future where greenhouse gas emissions are as rigorously regulated—or more rigorously regulated—as Schedule I drugs. Adam-Troy Castro returns to our pages with his latest story, “Seed.” It’s a SF piece that asks: how far would you go to save your own life, and what would you be willing to sacrifice? We also have two terrific flash pieces: “Dandelions” from Martin Cahill and “Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell” by Andrea Kriz.

Our fantasy shorts include “We’ll Never Die in the Woods,” a fairy tale-inspired story of sisterhood, witches, and princesses by Carlie St. George. A.T. Greenblatt delves into the sometimes opposing forces of mindfulness and adventurousness in her story “Mindfulness and the Machine.” We also have a flash story (“Whispers from the Sea”) from Oyedotun Damilola Muees, and another (“To the Waters and the Wild”) from Izzy Wasserstein.

Of course our spotlight interview team sat down with our authors and our squad of book reviewers report on the latest new releases. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Escape Velocity, a new novel by Victor Manibo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the bestselling editor of more than forty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent anthologies include Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele), The Far Reaches (from Amazon Original Stories), Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, A People’s Future of the United States, and the three volumes of The Dystopia Triptych. A two-time Hugo Award-winner, John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed and is the publisher of its sister-magazines, Fantasy and Nightmare. For five years, he ran the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on various roleplaying game books for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Tome of Heroes. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Carbon Zero

D. Thomas Minton | 1788 words

“Is there a problem, officer?”

“We’re not the police.” My partner, Enrico, places his palm against the door, ready to test the old man’s resolve.

I tap my finger against my thumb and SNAPbeam the warrant to the old man’s synaptic cache. “We’re EPF.”

“Oh,” the old man whispers, as if his voice has been snatched away.

No one likes the police showing up on their porch, but they would rather the police come knocking than the EPF. Years of aggressive action against climate violators has given the Environmental Protection Force its well-earned reputation.

We give him a moment to review the warrant, signed, sealed, and legally enforceable in any jurisdiction on Earth.

“Give me a second to tidy—”

Enrico doesn’t let the door close. “We don’t care if you haven’t dusted, Mr. Costa.”

Being no match for two young, modded investigators, Costa retreats. “Close the door,” he says. “You’re letting in the smoke.”

Spurred by the early arrival of the annual heatdome and the decades-long drought, the Agalhor Creek fire has been raging for weeks and recently combined with three smaller blazes to produce the season’s first mega-inferno event.

It’s going to be a bad fire year, and the UNEP has already issued warnings that our suppression systems might not protect key population centers. Indeed, Agalhor Creek is spitting off dozens of fire whirls, and the turbulence was so bad, our hydro-cell skimmer nearly diverted during our final approach to the drop zone at the end of the old man’s driveway.

Costa stands thin-lipped, arms crossed in defiance. My IR lenses clearly register depressed skin temperatures due to heavy sweating.

With the windows’ thermal screens in place, the modest living room is cool and dim. A threadbare couch. A small dining table. One of those plug-in atomizers gently hisses, contributing to the room’s oddly-cloying odor intended, one would assume, to mask the smell of the fire.

“Check his spongees,” Enrico says, unclipping his analyzer from the belt ring next to his holster.

Costa raises his hands. “You have no right to touch me.”

“International bylaw seven-seven-three gives me the authority.” I SNAPbeam the relevant regulation to him, and without waiting, press my thumb to Costa’s forehead. In a blink, I download his BIO-log to a secure evidence partition on my synaptic cache.

“I think you’ll find everything in order,” Costa says.

“I’m sure we will,” Enrico mumbles as he follows his analyzer around the room’s perimeter.

A day ago, Enrico had arrived from the Barcelona Office to assist our unit, which had been hard hit by the recent Lygma-13 outbreak among the rank-and-file investigators. Even I had been called back to the field. For the last eighteen months, I’ve been jockeying paperwork in the processing office because it afforded me the flexibility to be with my wife, Elena, during her chemo treatments.

I scan through Costa’s data. His metallo-organic corpuscles and chloroplast implants are functioning within operational ranges. Costa’s CO₂ emissions are below detectable levels as the bio-engineered MOCs in his lungs capture the carbon dioxide from his exhalations and shunt it to the photosynthetic nodules on the back of his hands for metabolic processing.

“What are you looking for?” Costa asks. His thermal signature tells me he’s scared, although anyone hearing the tightness in the voice would already know that.

“It’s in the warrant,” Enrico says.

“I’m a historian, not a lawyer.”

I almost hear the disdain in Enrico’s eyebrow rise.

“Well, well. What have we here?” Enrico pushes open what should have been a bedroom door. He tosses the light switch, and several spots come alive. According to my lenses, they aren’t standard LEDs, but full-spectrum lamps more typical of a greenhouse than a residence.

“That’s just a hobby,” Costa says.

Enrico extends his arm to stop the old man from entering the room.

“Let me guess,” I say, coming over to the doorway. “Six vats?”

Erico hands me his analyzer. “Close. I count seven.”

The small room has been converted into an algae-growing facility. Seven one-hundred-litre containers have been hastily plumbed with water circulators and temperature modulators. Tucked among the vats is a portable air pump whose intake hose snakes over to the door. All but one of the tanks has murky, blackish water in them. If not for the air freshener in the other room, the whole house might have smelled sweetly of decay.

Enrico dips his finger into the one tank that has a skin of green algae on its surface. He holds it up in front of his left eye, and his lens magnifiers click as they cycle into place. “Chlorella,” he says.

“I—I’m growing my own protein supplement,” Costa says, again trying to enter the doorway.

“Stay over there.” I point across the room, and reluctantly, Costa retreats.

“What was it?” Enrico asks, stepping out of the grow room. “A sudden bloom and then a die-off? Chlorella can be tricky that way, especially if you don’t harvest it regularly. It takes a lot of know-how to get the growing medium balanced just right.”

Costa is sweating heavily again, his eyes fixed on me as I raise the analyzer and resume the search pattern Enrico had started.

“But tell me,” Enrico continues, “why seven vats for just the two of you? That’s a lot of protein—”

Costa’s eyes flick in Enrico’s direction.

“Oh, yeah; there’s supposed to be two of you here. You and your wife. What’s her name? Susan or . . .”

“Suzanna,” Her name barely squeezes through the constriction in Costa’s throat.

“That’s right,” Enrico says, as if he didn’t already know the answer. “She out in the garden?”

Costa winces at Enrico’s question.

I don’t like where this is going, so I clear my throat, hoping to divert my partner. We know Costa’s wife has been ill, even if her sealed medical records deny us any specifics. Costa is more than likely up to something illegal, but that doesn’t give us license to be cruel.

I turn my attention back to the climbing CO₂ numbers on the analyzer. They peak near the bookcase, and then fall off as I move past it.

“Those analyzers are top of the line,” Enrico says conversationally. “Sensitive to carbon dioxide down to micromolar concentrations. It can detect a single exhale from a person without spongees.”

I’m not sure Costa heard him; his gaze is focused intently on what I am doing.

“Seven vats,” Enrico says again. “Did you know that’s almost exactly the amount of Chlorella that would be needed to scrub the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air of one person?”

I push against the bookcase and feel it wiggle.

“Please . . .” Costa says. His eyes shine wetly in the yellow light streaming in from the vat room.

My stomach tightens. I have an inkling of what I’m about to find, and I pray I am wrong. I push harder on the edge of the bookcase. Something clicks. The bookcase shifts and swings open on a set of concealed hinges.

My helmet lamp flickers on.

A scuffle breaks out as Enrico wrestles Costa against the wall and clips a neural restraint onto his forearm. The device saps the strength from Costa’s muscles, and he slumps to the floor, barely able to even sit upright.

The old man wails like a wounded animal. “Don’t hurt her! It’s not her fault!”

A woman sits on the floor pressed into the corner of what must have been a coat closet before the bookcase had been installed. Her legs, little more than skin and bones, splay awkwardly beneath her like twigs strewn onto the ground. The backs of her hands are covered with black pustules where her chloroplast nodules should have been. Her head slowly rises, and she fixes me with pitiful eyes too large for her face.

“The cancer,” Costa says. “Her body rejected the MOCs because of the cancer.”

I grip the edge of the bookcase; my head feels like it will float away. What cancer has done this? Is this a preview of Elena’s fate?

Enrico comes up next to me, his expression grim as he stares down at the husk cowering on the closet floor. “Seven-seven-three violation.”

Decades of inaction have driven atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations above five hundred parts per million. The world burns around us, caught in a positive feedback loop that threatens to run away. Net zero is no longer an option, and the direct air capture facilities cannot scrub fast enough. The Seven-seven-three mandate requires all humans to be modded to carbon zero because we have no wiggle room left between our survival and our extinction.

“Well?” Enrico asks.

I do not need to check the analyzer, but I do anyways. The readout flashes; CO₂ levels in the hidden room are above the acceptable range. Clearly Enrico’s determination is correct, and yet, I hesitate, something I’ve never done before. For the first time in my career, I see, crumpled on the floor of that hidden room, something other than just a Seven-seven-three violation.

“I need your concurrence, Investigator Munich.”

The analyzer beeps as it finishes logging its evidence with Geneva.

Costa sobs against the wall behind me. Surely, he knows what my concurrence means. The mandate exists for a reason and leaves no room for compassion or exception. I can do nothing except what is required by my oath and the law.

“Yes, a Seven-seven-three.”

Before I have even finished speaking, Enrico draws his pistol.

I grab his arm and start to say something, but what case can I make?

My partner’s eyes narrow. “She’s dead anyways, and every breath she exhales is only killing the rest of us.”

“Can we just—”

Enrico fires.

My knees buckle. I stumble against the bookcase for support.

Enrico turns. “Caesar Costa, you are an accessory to the violation of International Mandate Seven-seven-three. Do you have any defense?”

Costa has stopped crying and stares blankly up at us. “I loved her.”

In my years as a field investigator, I have heard accessories offer many excuses, but none have risen to the level of a defense. I wonder now if this one should. Yet, I know it cannot. Not for Costa. Not for anyone, not even me.

I flinch as Enrico fires.

He holsters his pistol. “Our ride’s incoming.”

Enrico leaves the door open, allowing the reddish glow from the Agalhor fire to filter in through the smoke collecting in the room. The fire is only a few kilometers away, with the suppression walls the only thing left standing between this house’s survival and extinction. Even if it doesn’t burn down, will anyone want to live here after what we have done?

©2023 by D. Thomas Minton.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D. Thomas Minton lives on the shore of a mountain lake in British Columbia, but still pines for the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. When not writing, he works as an aquatic biologist and helps communities conserve important fish habitat and the occasional coral reef. His short fiction has been published in Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and Apex Magazines, and his books can be found in most online bookstores. His idle ramblings hold court at dthomasminton.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Dandelions

Martin Cahill | 772 words

We lost because we fought.

In the beginning, everyone thought it was irresistible, the violence. No research had been done yet; no autopsies undergone. The news about these strangers from the stars didn’t even break nationally until their corpses numbered in the hundreds, sprawled on street corners and train cars, at shopping malls and playgrounds, silent and glad in their death.

As pockets of the world continue to go dark, we ask ourselves pointless questions. Could we have resisted? Why didn’t we at least try? Is this all we are, just meat and hate?

Naysayers sprung up from the ashes of our dying world like weeds. We’re supposed to kill them! They’re built to die. Didn’t you read the news? These fucking animals are built to make us kill them; they aren’t meant to survive.

Which, of course, is the point. Earth was able to comfort itself for the first few months, drugged on the convenience of our biology. They had pheromones that intoxicated, drove humans to violence. The world shrugged. Whatcha gonna do? We salivate at the smell, our palms itch at the sight, we are Pavlov’s dog and blood is on our muzzle.

How’s it our fault? Your existence rang the damn bell, friends.

Until that day in Stockholm, it was taken as fact: No person could resist. When that old man brought one of them home, wrapped in a blanket, you could feel the planet shiver. Never mind the toxicology reports that broke worldwide weeks later, a whisper among the shouts of a civilization realizing they were ending. Never mind the numbing comfort that only one percent of humans were not affected by these pheromones, unable to be driven to unspeakable violence at the mere glimpse/scent/touch/taste/knowledge-that-even-in-the-dark-they-are-there of these aliens.

Never mind that was exactly what they wanted to happen, what they had evolved toward like a molten length of steel beaten into the shape of a blade. Violence was the seed they planted in us. In their death, we planted them into the earth and watered them with blood.

Like dandelions, they spread through their own destruction. The body sacrifices, says goodbye to its myriad parts, and dies so that the majority may live.

And unseen, yet in the air, on our knuckles, coating our lungs, they spread.

It was four months later that the panic started.

“I thought it was one of them,” she sobbed, her voice breaking like bullet-kissed glass. “I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know!” The news said she had been eating with him across the table; they had been talking about a new job offer. She said it was like a switch had been flipped; she took a sip of her drink, she laughed at his joke, she drove her steak knife into his throat.

She only noticed when she saw drops of red in her glass, diluting the rosé, turning it merlot with unspeakable regret.

Everyone at the crime scene had lungs that needed air. Masks and respirators were the tools of the paranoid and anxious; no one had wanted to wear one when illness was visible, why would they start now?

By this point, there were no more strangers from the stars. Only mountains of corpses, bulldozed and collected on corners by furious workers, enraged even at the sight of their limp forms. They stopped appearing on street corners and in restaurants. They stopped hailing cabs and browsing bookshelves. They stopped putting change in vending machines and watching the clouds.

By this point, we have become the strangers from the stars. Why need more arrive? They’ll be here soon enough.

We who remain eke out a living, trying as best we can to avoid them, those who used to be us. New DNA dances through them, their pheromones tickling the minds of those last few who have yet to succumb.

They’re building something; every day, new knowledge arrives from other stars, blooming in their minds. They grow. They change. Even as we shrink from the light, they yearn toward it. It’s a light we cannot see or fathom, but they work toward it, an alien sun calling them home. Asking to be let in.

It won’t be long. This is their garden now.

Dandelions used to be the weeds. We didn’t suffer them, not for a moment. You can’t let them grow. You can’t let them choke the flowers.

But when your whole garden is weeds, it’s the flowers that don’t belong. And when the sun finally belongs entirely to them, we’ll only have wished we were stronger—that we’d left the dandelion whole, unblown.

©2023 by Martin Cahill.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martin Cahill is an Ignyte Award-nominated science fiction and fantasy writer living in Hell’s Kitchen, NY and works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop of 2014 and a member of the NYC-based writing group, Altered Fluid. You can find his fiction work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Shimmer Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His short story, “Godmeat,” appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 anthology. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut from Realm Media. Martin also writes, and has written, book reviews, articles, and personal essays for Tor.com, Catapult, Ghostfire Gaming, Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog. You can find him online at @mcflycahill90.

Seed

Adam-Troy Castro | 6714 words

The two of us, myself and this man I did not know, sat at a table in a windowless white cell with an indefinite light source.

I was afraid, as afraid as a human being can be. I remembered every step that had brought me here and I did not consider this a place of safety, only one promising a damnation not quite as painful as the one that was otherwise certain, if I did the sensible thing and left.

The man had a lean face with high cheekbones and eyebrows that gave him a permanent scowl. His features were foreign to me in some manner that was not easy to define; some race of humanity I had never encountered in my limited travels. But he seemed amiable enough, in the way that powerful people can be amiable when they are about to ruin you and know there is not much you can do about it. He had a bumpy bald head and he wore a silver disk at forehead altitude, its intelligence advising him in ways I could not even guess at.

He had told me his name but I had not registered it. I could not avoid the irony that it was the only thing today I would forget of my own accord.

On the table between us was a little organic object, moist and greasy and shaped like the seed of a certain popular fruit. The seed it resembled was edible and it was sold in bags to be munched in great numbers. This seed looked like that, but it was not that. It just looked the same, or like the turd of one of the rodent species that had followed humanity into space. I almost retched at the thought.

The man whose name I’d forgotten said, “Eat it.”

I would later remember the things that went through my head as I obliged: the awareness that this would not be good, the certainty that I had no choice, the grief that went along with knowing I had put myself in this position.

And more, behind all that, memories from my recent past, the face of a man I might have loved, remembered here as an angry scowl, hollering things I secretly agreed with; another face, that of a little girl, intense and serious and with two eyes that did not match.

I knew I would never see either of those people again, but within a second of biting the seed I had forgotten why. Were they far away? Were they dead? Had I sinned against them so grievously that they did not want me in their lives anymore?

I felt a little fizz on the tip of my tongue and then: nothing.

The man said, “Place your hands flat on the table.”

As blank as any newborn, I did that too. The table was cold and smooth and it had a strange organic feel, adhering to my palms like glue.

The man said, “The seed has already gone to work. You are not the same person you were before you put it in your mouth, and so I will now necessarily have to repeat much of your orientation. This is an inconvenience of my role here, but it is an inherent part of my responsibilities. And so I begin again.”

I said, “What?”

“You received a full briefing, ending only a few seconds ago. It presented all the data you needed, but none of that is now accessible to you, and so I will now have to brief you again, to make you comfortable as the devices do their work. Panic on your part would not be effective, but it would be unpleasant for both of us, and so it costs me nothing to start over. Do you feel any pain?”

I considered this question. Pain can be hard to quantify, of course. What is discomfort for one can be unbearable agony for another; and what is torture for that one, another would find painless. What I felt was primarily a sense of wrongness, an awareness that the current existence was without context for either myself or this room. It didn’t bother me as much as it should have, that I was nobody, that I didn’t know my name, my station in life, or the path that had brought me here. It did bother me that I didn’t know anything about this man, who struck me now as something other than fully human, either in the measured way he spoke or in the way his piercing eyes maintained that stare of his without a single blink.

“I don’t know why I’m here.”

“That is normal,” he said. “You knew everything until you ate the seed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The devices are least effective in erasing the knowledge that was still accruing in the last few seconds before ingestion. That is because they were still resonating when you put the seed in your mouth, and they bled through. You must remember a certain feeling of desperation, the knowledge that all your alternatives were exhausted, the revulsion that went with resignation to the elimination of all you were, and surrender to all the things you would become. Is this accurate?”

I possessed all these fragmentary thoughts, but did I remember them, really? Or did I remember remembering them, remember what it had been like to remember? It was more like that, I feared: more like the shape of the experience than the experience itself.

I said, “I remember a man. A little girl.”

That was a thick voice. It did not sound like my own, but would anything at all sound like my own?

What, I wondered, had I done to myself?

He said, “That’s normal.”

“Is that my family? Am I her mother?”

“These are unproductive thoughts. How are you otherwise?”

“I can use a glass of water.”

He said, “That’s also normal. The answer’s no.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“You only think you are. It is the ghost of being thirsty, the habit you formed of thirst as a reaction to stress. You think of the request itself as a delaying tactic, something that will take up time while you continue to consider how you should react to this unfamiliar experience. But all experiences will be unfamiliar to you now, and you cannot have a glass of water. Glasses of water are in your past.”

My reaction to this pronouncement was far more calm than I had any right to feel, and I asked my next question with the same strange placidity.

“Am I dying?”

“You are,” he said. “The you that existed is in its last few heartbeats of life. And the you to come is being born. You are having both experiences simultaneously. The creature you have agreed to be will not require hydration to function. And yet, you will still be drawn to the sensory pleasure of a cold liquid flowing against the back of your throat, and of your tissues being refreshed as the substance is distributed throughout your body. These sensations are now antiquated, and you need to accept that the impulses urging you to seek them out are now vestigial. They will never go away, but you can trust me when I tell you that you will adapt to disregarding them.”

I found myself licking my lips. They felt dry. I imagined them growing cracked and pitted as water was denied me for long periods. I felt the stirring of panic. And yet, did I feel the ghost of the awareness that I didn’t want water so much as want to want water. I felt that I should be thirsty, and therefore I was thirsty. I knew, with cold certainty, that this dichotomy would always be with me, and again I thought: what have I done to myself?

He said, “Do you remember being afraid?”

I did not remember anything directly, but I remembered the echoing aftermath of those sensations. I remembered the corridors racing by as I ran, the footsteps close behind me, threatening shouts, a certain door in the distance that promised delivery of a kind, but that I regarded with a separate species of dread.

I gathered that the entrance I remembered, vast and welcoming and silvery beneath a sign identifying it as something-something Embassy, had been the threshold which brought me here, to this cell, to this man, to the agreements I had made, to that seed, and to what I had just been told was a lifelong elimination of thirst.

And these, too, were not memories, but the memory of memories, the things that remained in my mind as I bit down.

I said, “I was terrified.”

“Well, there you go. At the moment you ate the seed, you knew that bad men had been pursuing you. You knew that if you left this facility without making some arrangement with us, those men would make sure horrible things happened to you. Eating the seed and accepting what it would bring must have seemed almost as terrible, but presented your only means of survival. So you pursued the only option that did not promise extinction.”

I tried to lift my hands off the table. I could not. The surface held my palms flat. My shirtsleeves exposed a small strip of skin at each wrist and so they were held tight as well, so tight that I might as well have been part of the surface, growing out of it like a plant.

Panic was not far away, but I could not access it.

I said, “What would have happened if I let them catch me?”

“The precise reasons for your predicament were complicated. But those men were hunting you down at the behest of a powerful criminal whose intentions toward you were not kind. There were three men at the end because it is by killing the fourth you achieved enough volition to flee those that remained. They are brutes, but not just brutes; they had considerable affection for the one you killed, and a genuine reverence for their master, a man named Magrison. They would not have been shy about doing you grievous harm themselves, of making you pray for death even before bringing you back to the employer whose intentions of causing you unimaginable pain puts their own cruelty in a realm of much lesser consequence. In his hands, death would not have come quickly enough to qualify as a blessing. You were well aware of this when you came to us. Our establishment, a diplomatic installation that you knew to have offered others sanctuary before, was like the cliff you jumped off in order to avoid capture.”

It was unnerving, the way he suggested the worst atrocities without any alteration in his tone of voice. It was, I realized, like a math equation to him, a less-than or greater-than calculation that pit whatever terrible fate I’d escaped, against whatever terrible fate I had accepted.

I said, “They won’t come after me here?”

“They might want to. They will face retribution because of their failure to apprehend you. But they are not mad. They know better than to get between us and someone who crosses our threshold in search of sanctuary. And they know you are lost to them. Which is, more or less, the same thing. Keep your hands on the table.”

I tried to remember more. Clarity only went back as far as the instant I ate the seed; a moment when I now remembered thinking that what I was about to do amounted to suicide. It was a thought that had come with considerable relief I would not be experiencing something in specific, a thing that was so unthinkable that the dread, if not the details, remained with me, still. I got the impression now that my understanding of the horrible fate I had fled was quite vivid, built at least in part on having seen it being inflicted on others.

Maybe I’d participated. Maybe I’d been a stalker like them, tracking down others who’d crossed our leader. Maybe I’d caught one or two who were just as desperate as I’d been, racing toward the threshold of this very establishment; maybe I’d caught up with them at the last moments of their desperate flights, and been one of those who dragged them kicking and screaming back to this Magrison and to the fate they were owed. This felt possible.

On the other hand, maybe I’d been an innocent, only linked to his crimes by circumstance, a figure who had wound up being bound to him, and found the noose around my neck growing tighter as his manipulation left me owing debts that I could never repay.

I had no sense of my prior self that would have placed me in either category. But of the thing he did to those who incurred his rage, I could summon only the vaguest impressions. I remembered wide eyes, fraying sanity, disbelief on the part of the suffering that in a universe they understood as a construct with themselves at the center, punishments so final could be applied to themselves. But that was all I could remember beyond the feeling I’d gotten, upon looking at the seed this other man had given me, that everything I defined as myself was about to end, and that in these current circumstances only a fool would not take this devil’s bargain.

And it had been a devil’s bargain. I was sure of that.

So: fine. What devil’s bargain had it been?

My palms were still stuck to the table. My arms were slight and wrapped in scuffed gray sleeves, with various smudges of dirt and at least one drop of a clotted brown substance that must have been blood: the blood of the stalker I’d killed, or someone else, I didn’t know.

I didn’t know. They appeared to be a woman’s arms. A slight woman’s arms, the skin a grayish-brown, with light blue veins visible in the harsh light of this white room. The tip of some fluid, recombinant tattoo poked out of the wrist cuffs.

I said, “What’s happening?”

The man smiled at me. He had very small white teeth and receding gums, not pink or red but a plasticized white. Organic structures deeper in his mouth suggested that he wasn’t human, just something that was meant to pass as human, or to evoke humanity for the comfort of those who entered his presence knowing precisely what he was. There was no kindness or warmth in his smile, but no malice either. He gave me the impression that he didn’t want any of this to be any more difficult for me than it absolutely had to be.

“The seed contained a fleet of about five million self-replicating nanite devices, designed to customize you for your new life. They entered your bloodstream at the instant you broke the containment vessel. A percentage of them went to your brain where they immediately went about erasing your long-term memory while preserving your intelligence and problem-solving ability. That first effect takes considerably less than a second and is for all intents and purposes instantaneous. It has been several minutes, now. Will you accept that your old life is by now erased and that you cannot return to it?”

“I suppose I have no choice.”

“You do not. These are necessary changes that you agreed to before you signed the contract. You no longer have a name, a circle of other human beings you consider friends and family, or the tally of life experiences that have formed your personality and moral center. The comforting aspect is of course that you are better off without any of them. You were in your predicament because the person you were demolished her friendships, ruined her finances, betrayed her benefactors, and made enemies of the worst parties possible. She is gone and you would find it most helpful to consider the creature you are an infant, still growing accustomed to the life that follows.”

I felt a fresh sensation fluttering in my chest. “I . . . feel that I should still be more frightened by that than I am.”

“Normally, your human instincts would demand it. The nanofleet has taken steps to ensure that you remain calm. Otherwise, yes, your transformation over the next few minutes would be quite traumatic. Do not worry.”

I noticed something happening at my wrists: a strobing effect as my flesh tried on separate colors. There was a pale white; there, a tint so dark that it seemed to swallow all ambient light. There were multiple shades in between them. The very bones of the list appeared to flow like liquid, as my body decided what it was going to be. It was fascinating, and I became aware of something else, a harsh itch that was the distant cousin of agony.

I said, “What’s this?”

“This is what completes the process of guaranteeing your safety from those who pursued you. They should accept that there’s no point in punishing someone who cannot remember the trespass, especially when she is now in the hands of someone whose reach is longer than their master’s. But it is still possible for vindictiveness to overcome common sense, and so we are currently rendering you unrecognizable to them. The nanofleet is altering the bone structure of your face, introducing changes to your chin, your nose, the placement of your eyes, your complexion, and even your height. It might also adjust your secondary sexual characteristics. By the time all this is over, the changes will be reflected by reverse-engineered alterations in your DNA, sufficient to explain what you will by then appear to be. There are among the many varieties of the human species some races so isolated that they number in only the low thousands. You might end up being one of those, an exotic sight to amuse those who encounter you in places like this world or New London. Or you might be among the most common. In any event, they will not recognize you.”

“Will anyone?”

“As the person you were? Never. From day to day? Is it possible somebody you encounter twice might say, Oh, that’s the same person I saw yesterday? No. But that is irrelevant in any case. In your new life, you will have priorities other than interaction with other human beings.”

The fluttering continued. It hurt quite a bit now, though it was the kind of pain I did not have the resources to resent, let alone protest. It was the sense of things being moved around inside me; my ribs changing curvature, my spine altering length, my organs shifting in shape and position to alter my own, as well as to assume other functions I could not even begin to guess.

I said, “You’re saying I won’t have family? Or friends? At all?”

“You did not do well by the family and friends you had. Some of them are dead because of you. Others are far from here, cursing your name. Part of the deal you made with us is that we would protect the ones who still remain alive but in danger. But no, given your nature, we are not ourselves foolish enough to trust you with such connections. The need for them will go the way of your sense of thirst.”

“That’s just crap,” I said, feeling a strange pride that I was able to summon even this mild expression of resentment to fling in this cold man’s face. “Everybody needs people to care about. People to love.”

“Your actions over the past few years document contempt for the responsibilities that go with the privilege.”

“But I can’t just be alone forever. I’ll go insane.”

“You can be alone forever,” the man said, “but you will not go insane.”

Something popped inside me. It felt like a release of internal pressure that alleviated the pain and came with a relief deep enough to qualify as pleasure. For one queasy moment I mistook it as a sensation everybody has experienced at least once or twice, and I waited for the spreading warmth that would confirm I’d soiled myself. But that never arrived. It was just the dissolution of what had been an unpleasant, lifelong presence, and its replacement with a sense of completion, of something messy and often uncooperative being replaced by something that would never give me any trouble.

The pop had been audible, and the man said, “That was your stomach.”

He offered no further explanation.

I felt some other shifting, deep inside, and I said, “Can I still change my mind?”

“That would be unfortunate for the loved ones whose safety you bargained for.”

“I don’t care about them now. You said it yourself. They’re in my past. I have no idea who they are or how they’re related to me. They can take their chances.”

“See?” he said. “That kind of thinking is a relic of the kind of person you were.”

“And that makes no difference. The only thing that makes a difference to me now is the person I’m becoming, and you’re saying that she—”

“Not necessarily she,” he said.

“That whoever,” I pushed on, “has no ties to the person I was. Not name, not face, not memories, not identity. This person, this new person, owes them nothing. I can move on, and make my own way without guilt.”

An infuriating half-smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You agreed to this procedure.”

“Yes, and that’s the damn point. I didn’t sign a contract. The person I was signed a contract. She is now dead. I am reborn. If I am really a completely different person, I can’t be held liable for her mistakes. You’re holding me under false pretenses. You have no direct claim on me.”

His smile was affectionate. He liked my cleverness, my attempt to use legal arguments against someone representing parties who held me under their absolute power. He may have been pleased that this showed a resourcefulness I might soon need. It was not an appalled smile, and from this I knew that my inadequate little protest would do no good.

He said, “Are you surprised to learn that you were a lawyer?”

I was not surprised. But this information did nothing for me. My knowledge of the law was all but gone, its effects only shown by this attempt to argue for my freedom. I had to recognize it was something that shared the same properties as my thirst: a reflex that would never leave me, that would always pull at me but would never be relevant to whatever was now expected of me. And again I wondered: what have I done? What do they want of me? Why would they do something as petty and cruel as taking away my ability to enjoy a nice tall cup of ice water?

He rubbed the corner of his mouth with his index finger, a human gesture and a terrifying one in that its mere appearance underlined it was the only human thing he’d done in the long minutes since this newborn version of myself first met him.

He said, “There are three problems with that reasoning.

“The first, of course, is that it assumes the people I represent give even the slightest damn about human laws. We do not. They have diplomatic relations with human beings and are cordial when possible, but cannot be held liable to your contract law. The second is of course that threatening unthinkable legal consequences bears weight when you are capable of communicating with a court, and, you, of course, are not. We hold the reins of power here.

“But there is another issue. And that is: while you may already be a new person in fact, you will not be one in any legal sense until you are provided with your new documentation, and that will not happen until your new documentation is written, a process we will not even begin until your transformation is completed. I can assure you that human authorities know of the various arrangements my organization makes with people, are resigned to them given our substantial power, and would not judge in your favor any legal appeals you might currently imagine yourself making. These gestures of defiance are silly. May I continue?”

I wanted to thrash, then. I wanted to punch this bastard in that extra-long nose of his. I wanted to run screaming from this facility, even if that meant surrendering myself to the stalkers who were hunting me; even if that meant facing the reportedly bigger monster behind them. But I couldn’t even raise my hands from the tabletop. It wasn’t just that they were stuck. It wasn’t that they were held by whatever biological magnetism the table possessed. It was that I couldn’t direct functional nerve impulses to those arms, to those hands. Right this moment couldn’t even summon what such an impulse should have felt like. And this threatened even more terror, but it lasted only a second before something like a cooling wind flushed through my system, and I found even the anger too difficult to maintain. I said, “Go ahead.”

“Very well. The creature you are about to become has been designed to survive with minimal expenditure of attention to coarse biological needs. For instance: no unenhanced human being can long survive without sleep. Without sleep, we die much faster than we do when deprived of food. This is an evolutionary design flaw, albeit one that human beings are conditioned to regard with satisfaction and pleasure. I would not give it up, myself. Still, it wastes one-third of your life, and so we have taken steps to eliminate it. From this moment on, your body will not know physical fatigue. You will not require long periods of useless inactivity to preserve your physical energies. Nor will you be able to summon a sleeping state out of preference. You will be awake and at peak alertness, now and forever.”

“What about dreams?”

“What about them?”

“I know some things. I know that people go crazy without dream sleep.”

“There are several reasons you won’t, but chief among them will be your capacity to summon refreshing dream states at moments of relative inactivity, such as while riding on public transports. Thirty seconds out of every twenty-four hours will be more than sufficient to avoid creeping psychosis; any more than that is inherently wasteful of you as a resource.”

“What about when I’m home?”

“Home is a place to store your body, or care for it, when it’s not in use. Your body will always be in use. It will always be upright and mobile. The nanite devices will take care of all necessary maintenance. They will, among other things, scrub your flesh and your clothing for all the substances that render an unwashed human body unpleasant to others in your vicinity. You will not need to shower or to brush your teeth or to see to other cosmetic shortfalls, any more than you will need to sleep; and you will not need space to store changes of clothing or other possessions, as you will not have any. This is useful as they just take up expensive and wasteful space. Home, in other words, now joins Thirst and Family and Sleep as among the things you no longer need. Instead, you will always be in public, and always be in motion, wandering around in the world.”

“W-what about food?”

“The nanites will be taking care of your nutritional needs, as they will be taking care of your hydration needs. They will forever be flying free of your body, and into your surrounding environment, obtaining mass that they will deliver back to you converted to any elements you may require. You will never know the messy inconvenience, or distraction, of meals, and as an inevitable side effect, of elimination.”

“B-but what if I want to eat?”

“You may occasionally have cravings for your favorite delicacies, or nostalgia for the pleasures they gave you, but as your digestive system is no longer required, it is currently being reconfigured into new internal structures that will be more useful for your new role in life. That is why I called your attention to the reclamation of your stomach tissue, a couple of minutes ago. Within twenty-four hours you will also no longer have kidneys or a liver; within forty-eight you will no longer have an esophagus or colon. By the end of a week your anus will seal up and even the premise of a meal will be, at best, theoretical. That would remove any last purpose you could possibly have for a home.”

The scale of the changes that this man described were now beginning to overwhelm me. I started to stammer and then felt that cool, calming wave again.

I looked down at my hands. They were a stranger’s hands. And the recombinant tattoo constantly churning at the end of my sleeves was fading, becoming a gray stain and then one that I could barely discern against the strobing skin color. I had the vague idea that the animated ink had once been important to my sense of self, that it had stood for something I’d once believed in, but what that principle had been remained elusive, and was even now fading still further, doing whatever a memory or concept does whenever a mind could no longer grasp it.

The man remained infuriatingly calm. “We do this because home is a point of vulnerability. There will be times when your activities in the world may be opposed by forces as potentially murderous as your recent pursuers. Home is tactically not just the charming human premise of those living an ordinary life; the place where your loved ones will always have to let you in, it is in practice the place where your enemies may find you. It represents another deadly inefficiency that we have eliminated. The creature you are becoming will have no need of it.”

“Then what am I supposed to do all day long?”

“And all night, of course.”

“Yes, all day and all night! How do I have a life?”

He said, “You will have a life, in that you will inhale and exhale and you will speak when required and you will interact in many small ways with any world where we place you. You will, among other things, explore. In any settled environment where we decide you will live, from planetary surface to orbital habitat, you will wander your community, using public transportation services when necessary, having brief and inconsequential conversations with others when you must, occasionally stopping at retail establishments to browse their wares and pretend polite interest, just for verisimilitude. You will never actually buy anything. Why would you, really? Whatever you could conceivably obtain, you have no place to store. Whatever you think you want, you have no purpose for. You will never need to stop because you will never tire or suffer any other physical needs. You will, of course, have enough credit on file to pay for anything you might theoretically need to obtain; it will follow you wherever you go, proof of citizenship wherever we send you.”

“But no food. No drink. No friends. No home.”

He looked amused. “You forget no sex.”

“Just endless wandering, without point!”

“Of course there’s a point,” he said.

And this was where he did something with his hands and a projected image appeared over the table.

It was a panoramic view of a city atrium, one I didn’t know. It was of course possible that familiarity with the locations of the world I’d known, whatever it was called, had vanished along with my memory of its name. But I thought not. I had the vague idea that the world where I’d lived and had people I’d loved and where I’d ultimately betrayed them had been decorated in various ivory shades like this room, although I also had the impression that much of it was adorned with vines and other greenery, hanging like garlands like every balcony. This world I saw now, or at least this location in this city on this world, was dominated by shades of purple, and most of the people seemed to favor it in clothing and hair color, their shades of skin welcome relief from what overwise would have been a cityscape that refused to wander far from a grape palette. The atriums were crossed by escalators and the balconies were teeming with merchants selling food and clothing and things that only the inhabitants of this purple place could want, and in the few seconds the image lasted I saw people ascending, people descending, children being the nasty horrors that children can be in public, single men drifting without vital purpose, women lingering next to kiosks, and a few beings of indeterminate nature having insistent arguments in the shadows. There were a few non-humans, too; there always were, and I spotted a few alien races I cared for and a few others I did not, wandering to and fro, going about their business, and looking isolated among all the humanity.

Then the image faded out, and the man said, “Did you see him?”

“See who?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“I didn’t see anybody!”

“You saw crowds,” the man said. “And in that crowd, there is a single individual, who crossed your field of vision twice, impossible to distinguish from all the people who had thirst and hunger and sleep and homes. Any individual who remains in motion at the same pace as the crowd is an unremarked, impermanent part of his environment. He never sits down on a bench and finds himself in casual conversation with anyone who might then become part of his life. He is never a chatty or charming neighbor who anyone would ever want to know better. He is never a co-worker, a fellow parishioner, a member of organizations. He is always proceeding at a steady pace from point A to point B, never needing to eat, never needing to attend to the other needs of his body, and never being established as someone who stops at a home location on a predictable schedule. Nor will he ever come to the attention of any organization that might want to stop him from doing what he has been put in place to do. Oh, it is possible that if anybody ever notices his isolation,” and here he hesitated, “her isolation, someone might seek to follow her, but otherwise, she is invisible. She is a permanent stranger, someone who the vast majority of humanity will just naturally assume to have an ongoing life they are not privileged to see.”

“People will keep seeing me, though. They’ll recognize me by repetition.”

“They will see. They will not register. Few human beings are awake enough to consider the oddness of one individual who never seems to stop wandering. Additionally, you reckon without the capabilities of the devices that will keep you going. They will make constant, subtle changes to your appearance. Your hair will change. Grow longer. Grow shorter. Your features will cycle through a virtually infinite series of possibilities. Even your clothing, which we will provide, will cycle through a series of never-ending changes. You will often catch a glimpse of yourself in mirrored glass and be surprised, whether in a pleased or displeased manner, by the way you look, which will range from prosperous to derelict. You will never know the person you see. And it will be all surface and it will bear no resemblance to who you will be most of the time, which is nobody. Because being somebody in particular is one of those inefficient things, like thirst, that you no longer need.”

“I’ll go mad.”

“Not at all. Your devices will pay constant heed to your mental health. As you walk, looking like any other vacant person who is not thinking of anything in particular, you will have access to any media you desire. Music, prose, dramatizations in multiple perceived media, the full library of human art, will all be accessible to you as you travel from place to place. As long as you do not have any other agenda to follow—and the nature of the being you are about to become is that of one who may not have an agenda for some time—you may do anything you wish as long as you remain in motion.”

“It’ll still be hell.”

“Not at all. It would be foolish of us to create a being like the one you are about to become and then allow her to become disabled through ennui or mental illness. Fortunately, human happiness is largely the response of the brain to the chemicals generated by stimuli. Your nanites will, again, see to your well-being. You will feel joyful, and alert, and loved; at the very least, never crushingly unhappy. From what I know of you, it will be a significant improvement over your previous life.”

I said, “I doubt that.”

And he shook his head, the way one does with a child who has not managed to pick up the simplest of lessons, and said, “Most of our recruits to this program say that. I’m afraid that it makes the next part necessary. I can only apologize in advance.”

And I felt a click, felt it, not heard it because it made no sound. It was inside me and with it came every memory from the life now gone. I remembered my relationship with my parents, who were still alive somewhere but who had jettisoned me from their own existence for the sake of their shared sanity. I remembered the way I had treated friends. I remembered the things I had done to prosper, and how it had somehow never seemed important to worry about the needs or well-being of any other person, if there was profit to be had at the far end of any transaction; I remembered the ruins I’d left behind, in more than one place, and I remembered the justifications that I’d used to make compromises seem right, reasonable, and the only sensible things I ever could have done. I remembered people who had loved me for a while and been left with no alternative other than hating me. I remembered falling in with this figure, Magrison, and the awful things I had done in his service. I remembered the people who still loved me who were now in danger from him, and how I’d left them behind as the pursuit closed in, always thinking in entirely practical terms, about how they might slow the bastards down, give me time to make my own escape. I remembered killing the one who’d come closest, and the promises he’d made to me just before I’d been lucky and left him in a pool of his own blood. I remembered the others drawing close and the promises they’d made, when it became clear that there would be no outrunning them; and then, finally, I remembered being totally out of hope when I’d entered a certain municipal square and realized for the first time where in the city I was, and what door was within reach; a place that had always been low on my long list of emergency escape plans. I remembered thinking I can go there, and there had been no immediate instinctive response that this was a crazy thing to think, because insanity of that sort is always defined by circumstances, and my circumstances were those of a person who had set fires that had burned more people than I could count, someone who at these final steps of a journey defined by treating those I cared for as disposable now had to admit the final truth; that this was suicide, and that I didn’t care even the slightest bit whether I lived or died.

None of this came as a surprise, not exactly. It all jibed with the various memory traces I’d been able to access, and the things that the man on the other side of the table had said. But knowing something intellectually is not the same thing as knowing it emotionally, or feeling all of a lifetime’s hoarded pain in one heartbeat.

And then I felt another click and all those memories faded into near-nothingness, like bad dreams dispersed by waking.

I found myself shaking, with my head in my hands. I was only dimly aware that my arms must have been freed for the purpose, or that neither my face or my hands felt like my own. What bothered me more is that though I felt like I was weeping, my eyes released no tears. They didn’t even burn, the way eyes do when tears are imminent. That had been an unpleasant sensation and I never would have imagined myself capable of missing it, but now I did, and I believe that of all the things that had been taken from me, this was the one I would find myself missing most of all.

Above all that was the knowledge that this man, whatever his name was, and the beings he represented, were right. The life I’d been promised, the one that had struck my prior self as a living death, was going to be infinitely better than the one I’d had before. The one before was one where I’d only imagined myself unbothered by the things I had done. It had been torment, and I’d skated above it all, fooling myself into thinking I was untouched. I could no longer imagine that I wanted to go back to it.

The man said, “Put your arms down.”

I placed them back on the table. They did not stick there. I guess that I had reached the point where I could be trusted to behave. And they were not my arms. Nothing about them resembled the arms that had done the things I’d just remembered, things that were now as distant from me as a line of biographical summary written about a stranger.

The man studied my face for some time, and what I recognized in his own was a deep compassion, wavering on an invisible pendulum that vacillated between envy and pity.

That had been the source of the malice I’d imagined in his manner. He wanted to go where I was about to go. But the people behind him, behind us now, wanted him to remain where he sat, in the position of the ferryman, taking the influx of the damned from one side of the river, to the other.

When he spoke again, the overwhelming impression I received from him was kindness.

He said,

“You will be a safety measure. You are what exists beyond the law, beyond all the systems that every modern society puts into place to protect people or to further the purposes of those in charge. Someday, and that day may never come, you may hear an inner voice that it would be helpful if you ascended to, let’s say, the thirty-second level of the Mercantile Bank of the Confederacy, or descended to the mass transit tubes, and stood in a certain spot, facing in a specific direction, and waited, in expectation of the moment when you may be needed. And sometimes there will be others in the vicinity, people like you, who have also been made into society’s wanderers, and who will be sent to the same place to attend a situation that requires group action. There are now hundreds of them in any city of any size. You are a family, of sorts, and there are crises where you will work together for extended periods, and where you might get to know one another, via crises that take place no more frequently than once in a decade or so, that the regular population never gets to notice because people like you are around to intervene.”

“Robots,” I suggested.

“Yes,” he said. “That is indeed the term we use in-house.”

I turned my arms palm-up, and examined the strange new implements that were my new hands. They looked entirely human, but the fingers were thicker, and longer; clumsy-looking, I thought, though I knew that they would not be. No, these hands would be skilled at whatever they were asked to do. They were wonderments, like an exotic landscape glimpsed from a window.

I had one more question, and it was a stranger’s voice that asked it. “Magrison.”

“Contending with the threat he represents is one of our long-term projects. Not one earmarked for you.”

My old self might have been disappointed. She’d had any number of scores to settle with the man who had made her a hunted woman. She might have argued, with great passion and eloquence, to be allowed to settle those scores. But she was a stranger. Her feelings were not my feelings and her scores were not my scores. As long as there were plans in place for him, I could turn my attention to the things I needed to care about, like the plans that were in place for me. I was confident that they would be appropriate and that they would be sufficient to help whatever remained in me of the woman now gone, find whatever redemption my own actions would earn for her.

I turned my arms palm-down again, and smiled at the man who had guided me through this difficult birthing.

He smiled back, and said:

“It’s so good to meet you.”

©2023 by Adam-Troy Castro.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to Spy magazine in 1987. His books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, one World Fantasy Award, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). The audio collection My Wife Hates Time Travel And Other Stories (Skyboat Media) features thirteen hours of his fiction, including the new stories “The Hour In Between” and “Big Stupe and the Buried Big Glowing Booger.” In 2022 he came out with two collections, his The Author’s Wife Vs. The Giant Robot and his thirtieth book, A Touch of Strange. Adam was an Author Guest of Honor at 2023’s World Fantasy Convention. Adam lives in Florida with a pair of chaotic paladin cats.

Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell

Andrea Kriz | 1290 words

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be the bomb. Not a bomb. The.

It wasn’t enough for my smile to light up every room, to be loved by my family, my friends. The day I was born, two planes crashed into New York City, killing thousands. The adults tried to hide it. But growing up, we all knew the bomb was coming. At seven years old, we lost our house. I ate ketchup and saltines for breakfast while my parents glued themselves to a Ponzi on a motel TV. At eight years old, I realized: The only way to not fear the bomb is to be the bomb.

So I laid the groundwork. It was 2009. Some kid brought a gene gun to school. The gold particles coated with oligonucleotides went into my forehead and from then on my DNA was metallic. He uploaded the video to YouTube. Thirteen years ago, a Japanese man had been driven to near-insanity on a game show, locked in a room and forced to survive off magazine sweepstakes winnings, seventeen million tuning in week after week.

In the hospital, I lived online. People said you could time travel. You could either see the future or see the past. Some of us went in and never came back. Reenact, rinse, repeat, we wrote on the walls. In a language only we could understand.

But I came out because I still had a job to do. It was 2019. My job (not the one I had to do) was to do my make-up and compound conspiracy theories. Here’s how it went: I’d apply my foundation, then lean into the camera and say something like, You know this “no cruelty” label is a front, right? They’re selling in China, which requires animal testing. They’re trying to play us both ways. Don’t call them theories, my manager said. Your audience doesn’t like that. I didn’t give a fuck what my audience liked. COVID came and dumped me by the wayside. No one was doing make-up anymore. The conspiracies had taken on a life of their own. COVID was a leak. COVID was the first. COVID was nothing but a practice run. They all thought the bomb would be a bioweapon. They didn’t know that flat on my bed, with a make-up mirror and eyelash tweezers, I was performing surgery. I took out three ribs and replaced them with armor plating.

After that, my job was to buy luxury handbags. Not just any ten thousand dollar handbags. Hermès. They didn’t sell them to just anyone. Not even anyone with all the money. You had to prove you were loyal. You had to build rapport with the sales associate. You had to pretend you weren’t in it for the status symbolism. You had to take a journey, consisting of buying sushi plates, riding crops, diamond-encrusted watches and reselling them on the down-low and pretending you were in it for the love of the brand. It was an art, and I was Picasso. I unboxed my prizes to millions of rapt eyes. I had legions of followers on Instagram and TikTok. I was the perfect American. Racially ambiguous. My parents were immigrants. My audience hated the communists they’d fled from. They thought the bomb would be Chinese or Russian. So naïve. The bomb was clicking down the streets of New York City, in stilettos that pinged radioactivity. The insurrectionists were on Capitol Hill.

Across oceans, borders came and went. Socials came and went, so fast they ceased to have names, only ideals. Be Real. Resist. Talk It Out. Kill ‘em With All Your Heart. I got a tattoo on my breastbone: a three-bladed symbol warning of the core I’d nestled beneath. Abortions got outlawed in thirty states. It was 2029. A seventeen-year-old hacked Uber. A seventeen-year-old leaked Grand Theft Auto XVI. A seventeen-year-old shut down half of the power grid of Texas. (That seventeen-year-old evaded capture for three years—because she was a girl. The FBI thought the hacker was her nonexistent boyfriend for the longest time because surely she couldn’t have done all that. By the time they arrested her, she was old enough to disappear into fog, fiber optics cables, and night.)

The third time insurrectionists rioted on Capitol Hill, I was invited. I was a model on one of the new socials at the time. Stream Life. I had tens of thousands of subscribers, each paying me ten dollars a month. I was on a yacht with a billionaire’s arm around me. Sex Sells. He stroked my hip, not knowing it was one of many fuses I’d incorporated into my body. What does the public want to see? Some greasy fuck waving the Confederate flag—or you? I refused. That’s the problem, he said. You kids don’t care about doing the right thing, you just live. I surgically split the sentiment to be shared across three socials later: Care. Just Live. Do Right. That night, I removed the flaps of skin beneath my upper arms. In their place, I installed ailerons. They kept me stable. They kept me from spinning out of control.

Fourth of Julys were different after that. We got a deepfake Leader, his eyes a bad edit of gray. We couldn’t decide what flag to put up. Do Right became our national motto—and social platform. The older generations thought the bomb had already landed. They thought, it’s gone off. But the world went on. They couldn’t comprehend it. They talked about uploading their minds to virtual worlds, returning to a better time. They wanted to take us young folks along with them. On the street, they said: It’s such a shame you’ve never known a world without crisis. It’s such a shame you don’t care, that you don’t fight, that you just take it. Yes, we took it. Into secret VR rooms, through encoded images into game servers where we communicated through capturing and training custom-made monsters. We had already uploaded ourselves online. We hadn’t ever known a world beyond this one. Only the ones we could make for ourselves.

The Scavenger Games were our crowning masterpiece. It was 2039. A harkening back to the first days of the internet. Puzzles and unidentified people in photos. GPS coordinate clues. Something light-hearted, the gamerunners said. Something to take everyone’s minds off current events. They put a beacon in my city. A light aircraft without a parachute. They put it in the center of the bridge saying it would draw its pilot, and they were right. I was a moth, powerless against the lure of the flame. By then, so much of me was metal that I curled perfectly into its fuselage. I imagined other Americans must be like me. But I was the closest.

Now I’m streaming toward New York City. Equipped with hundreds of millions of viewers. You’re a traitor to your country, they say, and I say, What country? Our country. Now call me a terrorist. Call me terrorbitch. Call me a traitor of humanity. I’m on an elevator, entrapped, riding up the highest and shoddiest skyscraper on billionaire’s row. I step into the penthouse. A hurtling, tiny dot. I put the barrel between our Leader’s heterochromatic eyes. I stare at the smoky sky, not allowing my eyes to adjust. The viewers are deafening now. They ask me to take my finger off the trigger, no, to do it, to shut off the livestream, pledge, divide, subdivide, no if I’m not going to do it then to let them come along for the entire ride at least. They ask why I’m doing this and the only thing I can say is—

What’re you so afraid of?

©2023 by Andrea Kriz.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea Kriz writes from Massachusetts, where she does research as a molecular biologist. In addition to Lightspeed, her stories have appeared in Clarkesworld and Asimov’s Science Fiction and have been translated into French in Galaxies SF. Her short story collection, Learning to Hate Yourself as a Self-Defense Mechanism, is upcoming from Interstellar Flight Press.

Whispers From the Sea

Oyedotun Damilola Muees | 971 words

On the cold dreary night, we were set to leave the water’s depth for good, do you remember what you asked me? Well, if you have forgotten, I haven’t. An avalanche of fright shrouded my insides, blocking any question knocking at the lid of my heart. The sky was feathered in a black robe. Little sparkling stars bobbed from the windows in their abode, rooting for our safety. The wind whooshed, sang, and mumbled arcane words. Chill gusts lifted all the hair on my skin, and flayed our dark seaweed-entwined hair. After climbing out of the water, I quickly peeled off my coat, slipped out of it with dexterity, and put on jeans, a parka, and a blue snapback. You fumbled with your coat, unable to come out of it. I helped you out, folding our coats in a satchel housing the rest of our items.

Deep down I was scared too, but I had to be stalwart. Cruel men with vicious dogs were trailing the shore, eager to ensnare us in their hold. Fishermen too were somewhere in the shack, waiting to capture us in their nets.

Is Mama not coming with us? You asked as we ran away from the shallow water massaging our feet. The whispering breeze waved us goodbye, asking if we would ever return. I refused to look back. Your questions were becoming a trench: gluing my feet to the ground, pulling me into a hungry quick sand. When I noticed the crashing waves and foamy welcoming waters were beyond our reach, I clasped your frail hands, gazing unflinchingly into your eyes.

It’s just the two of us on this journey. There’s no one else but us.

My words pricked you that night. Harsh and poignant words emanating from the mouth that you thought spilled untainted love. And so we kept running. My hand wove in yours. Your sobs like an incongruent song from a bunch of amateur choristers. We ran away from the waters—our home, never to return there again.

• • • •

We lived in a single room for weeks. The building was marooned in a buzzing area filled with bloated curses from the inhabitants, throbbing night music from scary-looking rugged speakers, obscenities, bawling dogs whose mouths did not shut all night as if calling our attention to a wraith. You whined about anything and everything. Fisayo, the water for bathing isn’t salty. The food carries a stench that will make me sick. How come this area has no beach? I patted your back, feigned a smile. Where we were was not as conducive to happiness as the vast sea we had to ourselves weeks ago. I was also nostalgic for the water hyacinth, the sea horses sharing a spot on my counterpane, and the dolphins serenading us with melodies from the sonorous voices. Here, we would make a home for ourselves, hopefully finding a human-man, getting married, and having kids.

• • • •

I returned from the daily hustle to find voices creeping out of our room. I was mad at you for disobeying my orders. At least I gave you the courtesy of not embarrassing you in front of your guest. You fought back with an arrow of words from your vocabulary quiver: why do you keep me here like I’m a fucking slave? I ignored you, rummaging through all the items in the bag where our coats were supposedly meant to be safe. There, I found them both—yours and mine sleeping on each other.

That night a cascade of thoughts fell on me. Some pierced me like questions in a courthouse. If I had no plans of returning to the sea, why am I still holding on to the coat? Perhaps I still yearn for the feel of saltwater on my skin. You were fast asleep on the left side of your body, folded hand on chest, mumbling gibberish.

• • • •

The decision to let you go was one that still haunts me until today. The night seemed colder without you by my side. Mama wouldn’t be happy that our strong bond of siblinghood has been severed by such irrelevant things as boys, pleasure, and your gigantic desire to be around the sea. If we ever see Mama again I’d tell her the way things worked on land is different from in the sea. I will tell her about the boy you met: the one with an afro and overgrown stubble on both flanks of his cheeks. I’m certain she will not approve of him.

• • • •

It’s been four months. Gbemi, you no longer reach out like you used to. Please keep your coat safe. And your coral bead bracelet, too. You know it’s an heirloom that can never be traded. So much has happened since we last communicated. I met a girl. We are in love. I can imagine the lineament etched on your face right now. Fisayo the saint, in love with a girl. This cursed land changed me the same way it did you. You should meet her. Both of you are sweet and stubborn.

• • • •

Gbemi, there’s a video of you trending online. People are calling you a mammy water. They say you swam in the raging water amid turbulent waves. This ostentatious act will get you killed. Your identity as a selkie could be uncovered. Please stay away from the water.

• • • •

On the night we left our home you asked if we would ever return. I should have answered you. Mama said we should never return. The waters have been polluted. Human-men were bent on capturing every last of our kind.

It’s a year already. I haven’t heard from you. I’ve sent you tons of text messages. Please reply. Stay safe. Keep your coat away from humans. And please stay clear of the coast.

©2023 by Oyedotun Damilola Muees.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oyedotun Damilola Muees is a Nigerian writer of contemporary and speculative fiction, and an associate member of SFWA and ASFS. His short story, “All We Have Left is Ourselves,” was a winner of the 2022 PEN Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers, and a winner in the 2022 Utopia Awards in the short story category. His areas of interest are queerness, environment, history, war, tradition, myths, folklore, and pop-culture. You can find his works (published and forthcoming) in Dark Matter: Monster Lairs Anthology, Nightmare, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Our Move Next, Solarpunk, Reckoning, Kalahari Review, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction anthology (Tor.com Books), Science Fiction World, and other places. When he is not solving customers’ issues in his daily job, you can find him watching animations, horror and thriller series, and snacking on plantain chips. You can connect with him on Twitter.

We’ll Never Die in the Woods

Carlie St. George | 5838 words

The unkind witch in Hook Tree Woods has little use for people. Mothers and sisters, obviously, will only disappoint you, and friends—well. She never had many of those. Her only friends now are snakes and toads, who are far preferable to humans. Reptiles don’t demand flattery. Amphibians aren’t afraid of the truth. They’re quiet, clever, infinitely more useful. They even taste good, if you’re hungry enough.

The unkind witch is not actually a witch, but she certainly is unkind. Kind girls don’t make it, not out in the woods. Kind girls don’t eat their friends to survive.

• • • •

The runaway princess (once the silent princess, once just a girl lost and starving and alone) is hiding in a small barn in a small village on the eastern side of Hook Tree Woods. She grew up on the other side of these trees in a village much like this one; still has family there, although not the loving kind, not anyone she can trust to shelter or save her. Not the kind of family she misses—or at least, not the kind likely to miss her.

It’s strange to be back after all these years away. She’d never thought to return, had found herself a new life with a new family, a husband who loved her for who she really was. What a fool she’d been, to believe all that. But she’d believed so many foolish things. Like how all the cruelty she’d suffered as a child had all been for a purpose. Like a home was something to be earned or rewarded, like she’d finally proved she was worthy enough.

Fairies, the runaway princess decides, can go rot in hell.

Noises outside the barn. Loud voices, an excited buzz. Her heart sinks as she listens to the villagers: the prince is coming. He’s almost here.

She can’t stay. She can’t run. There’s nowhere to go.

Except—

A witch lives in Hook Tree Woods. She can turn you into a snake, they say. No, no, the witch turns into the snake and swallows you whole. No, the witch is human. From the waist up, anyway.

There were no witches in these parts, back when she was a girl. Perhaps there are none now; perhaps the village children are only telling stories. Perhaps the way is safe—

No. Absurd. No way is safe, certainly not the woods. That’s where she met him, after all. That’s where she smiled and dared to speak, and doomed herself in the process.

Maybe he’ll bypass the woods, thinking she’d never dare return. Or perhaps he’ll chase her, but the witch will eat her instead. Better, anyway, to face a witch than a husband.

Better to die out here than ever be rescued again.

• • • •

The unkind witch, really the unkind hermit, takes a certain bitter joy, listening to all those ridiculous stories. Snake-shifter, indeed. The villagers are idiots, incapable of telling the enchanter from the enchanted—but at least their fear is funny, now that she knows she can survive it.

Of course, there are other stories. In one, a sweet and lovely girl is exiled to these woods by her own mother. Fortunately, a handsome prince comes to the rescue, sweeping her away to some far-off kingdom. How the unkind hermit had choked back tears, hearing that story, tears and a few far more venomous things. This tale, at least, must be true. Kind girls get blessed, after all, not cursed. Kind girls get kind futures; that’s the lesson. Everyone gets the fate that they deserve.

The unkind hermit broods about fates and futures while picking wild mushrooms not far from her tent. Then a sharp snap of wood underfoot, and her head snaps up. A pale stranger stumbles nearby, close enough to throw a rock at. She’s ginger-haired and dirty, dressed in an oversized blue cloak. The stranger glances up at the late-evening sky. Her hood falls back. Those dark freckles, that heart-shaped face—

For the first time in months, perhaps years, the unkind hermit begins to laugh.

• • • •

That laugh. Impossible, a cruel, breathless echo from another life. Before the runaway princess was even a princess, back when she was just her father’s daughter, the youngest daughter. A kind and miserable girl.

That laughter doesn’t belong here, and yet—

The runaway princess sees the tent first, a small, weather-beaten thing half-collapsed against the ground. Then she sees a woman crouching a short distance away. She’s wild-haired, this woman, wearing multiple layers of threadbare dark clothing. That black hair, those pale eyes—

“Sister,” the runaway princess says, helplessly, as a diamond spills from her lips.

“Still blessed, I see,” her sister says, as four small toads hop off her tongue.

• • • •

The unkind hermit knows this about magic: it’s a balance of order and chaos, reason and irrationality. The actual mechanics need not make sense, so long as the moral mechanics do.

An example:

A good girl, gone to fetch water for her family, meets a poor, old woman begging for a drink. This girl, sweet and virtuous and disgusting, gladly gets the woman water even though she’ll be punished for dallying. Fortunately, the old woman is a fairy in disguise, and rewards the girl with a blessing for her kindness: flowers and jewels will fall from her lips, one for every word she speaks.

Later, the girl’s wicked elder sister is sent to fetch water, so that she, too, might reap her magical rewards. But this time, the fairy is disguised as a rich young woman, and unaware, the wicked sister is predictably rude. Promptly, she’s cursed for her insolence: snakes or toads will fall from her lips, one for every word she speaks.

The punishment is slimy and grim, but mysteriously harmless—at least, harmless to her. The unkind hermit only speaks poisonous snakes into the world, ones which begin life in her throat, worming their way up and slithering around her teeth before slipping sideways out of her mouth. The toads, too, materialize in her throat before hopping up and out to freedom. Everything about this is impossible: how such creatures could fit, how she’s never once choked, how she’s never been bit, how she can speak intelligibly at all.

But that’s magic, through and through. Magic is wonder spun from righteousness. Only the moral must make sense; in this, stories and spells are quite similar. Even the unimaginable is possible, so long as poetic justice is served. So long as it is very, very clear who deserves a future and who does not.

• • • •

What—

The runaway princess opens her mouth, then closes it before any questions or petals or precious stones can fall out. There are too many words in her throat right now, all of them bewildered and more than a little afraid. She might litter exotic poppies and pearls across an entire acre of woods. Think of the ecosystem. The poor fucking birds.

She does know other languages. One is silent, spoken with fingers and facial expressions. An attendant—a friend—had taught her years ago, before it was made clear such lessons were unnecessary, that the silent princess (not yet a runaway) had no need to communicate with anyone but her husband. If only her sister knew this language—but that’s very doubtful. She looks half-feral, every inch the witch she’s purported to be—and she must be this snake-witch. Who else could it be? How long has she been out here, living like this?

If her sister remembered their secret-tongue—

But that thought is too foolish to even complete. It’s not a real language, anyway, only an imperfect code, and neither of them have used it in a long, long time.

Out of alternatives, the runaway princess resorts to the universal language of spreading her arms and mouthing what the fuck.

Her sister laughs. Startles into it, head tipping back, throat bared to the sky. Then she points at the runaway princess and echoes the gesture. What are YOU doing here?

No. Absolutely not. The runaway princess has been chased through village after village, town after town, by the person she once thought to be her love and savior. All she’s had to eat for two days are rose petals. She’s dirty and exhausted and her mouth tastes of thorns, and her long-estranged wicked sister is going to answer her questions, or the runaway princess is going to beat her with a stick.

(It’s a lie, but what a comforting one, that she could wield such a stick, that her power could lie in violence instead of virtuousness.)

What. Are You. DOING? Here. The runaway princess mouths the words, slow and exaggerated, as she points at the sad, half-collapsed tent. Where is Mother?

Her sister blinks innocently, one hand cupped to her ear. It’s infuriating. It drives the runaway princess to madness; it drives her hands up in the air, pointer fingers curling over her ears like little horns. MOTHER, the runaway princess signs in their old code. MOTHER.

And her sister begins laughing again, belly-laughter, bending over with it. She laughs so hard, her eyes well up. Mother, she signs back, only her fingers make a halo, because that’s how their code once worked: different speakers use different shapes, depending on their personal relationship to the subject. There was no single word for parent. It was only parent who loved you or parent who didn’t.

And oh, how Mother had loved her firstborn daughter. So much so, in fact, that when her big sister got herself snake-cursed because she couldn’t bring herself to do even one fucking good thing, it became the runaway princess’s fault. The runaway princess, ever the scapegoat, was promptly banished to Hook Tree Woods. And then—

Come now, maiden. Tell me why you weep.

The runaway princess swallows her fury before she can scream rubies into her sister’s face. Not that her sister can be bothered to notice. Instead, she’s laughing even as she fetches a small, black journal out of her tent.

Mother, her sister mouths, baring her teeth, even as she begins to write.

• • • •

Once upon a time, there were two sisters. The eldest looked like their mother, and so their mother loved her best. The youngest looked like their father, and so their father loved her best. None of them were very happy, but they were happy enough, at least until the girls’ father suddenly dropped dead.

The eldest girl was glad, at first. She couldn’t love her father, who did nothing but berate her: why couldn’t she be kind like her sister, why wouldn’t she smile when she was told to, why couldn’t she keep her ugly opinions to herself? (Because people asked, and they shouldn’t ask if they didn’t want to hear the answer.) And surely Mother would be happy, now that she could always have her way. Surely, she could finally learn to love both her daughters.

But the money ran out so fast, and Mother had to find work, and her bitterness towards her dead husband only grew and grew and grew. And Sister wouldn’t stop crying, her grief so loud and inexplicable, and the eldest girl hated her a little, grieving someone still ripping their family apart from the grave. Was it any wonder Mother hated Sister, too, when her stupid tears gave everyone headaches? Was it so wrong that Mother made her clean and cook and fetch water from the well, and yelled if she took too long, and beat her if she did something wrong?

Yes, of course it was. But Mother was vicious, and the eldest girl learned to be vicious, too, so that their faces would continue to match. Because who was she, if not her mother’s child? And who would she be if Mother turned on her, too?

Well. She’d learn that lesson soon enough.

Because after Sister had been driven out, there was no one left to shoulder the blame—and there was so much to blame the eldest girl for: their inhospitable living conditions, the constant threat of death by mere impulsive word, the village’s fear and suspicion and disgust with them both, the promise that every tomorrow would be just the same as yesterday.

Was it so wrong Mother kicked her eldest out, too? Was it any wonder that nobody would take her in? Who would shelter such a spiteful child; who would welcome such venom into their lives? The villagers chased her away. Of course, they did, and Mother led the mob. She drove the eldest girl into the woods with nothing, and left her and her toads and her snakes to die.

But the girl spoke her rage and betrayal into the world, and she ate its flesh, and she survived.

• • • •

“Dinner?” her sister asks, and kills the large snake that falls out of her mouth.

The runaway princess says nothing, sinking to the ground with the journal clutched between shaking fingers. If she’d thought her throat had felt crowded before—

It’s indignation choking her, fury. How fascinating to discover that she might not have been abused if only she hadn’t cried so much, that mourning the only parent who’d ever loved her was the one crime which could not be repented. Everyone might still be happy, if only her grief hadn’t been so loud.

No. THINK.

The runaway princess forces her jaw to relax and allows the bitter chrysanthemums to disintegrate on her tongue. She’s sticking on the words that serve her own anger—but this story isn’t a condemnation of grief. It’s an explanation, the logic of a small, angry child—a small, frightened child—desperate to keep her mother’s love.

Strange, to think of her sister as someone frightened or small.

The runaway princess feels unsettled, dazed. It’s not that she’d assumed her family would be happy. On especially petty days, she’d imagined them living in a filthy, sticky house, bickering about who would go fetch the water and sharing the bed with a half dozen toads. She’d wanted them to be miserable, but she’d never dreamt—

Now her sister is here, crouched beside the fire, skinning and gutting her decapitated snakes. She makes quick work of it, roasting the meat. Her sister never cooked a meal in her life.

The runaway princess shakes her head. She doesn’t understand.

“How could she?” she asks, ignoring the yellow petals. Her fingers shape the words with old resentment: Mother loved YOU.

Her sister laughs again. The sound echoes between the trees.

“No,” she says. “Some people are unlovable.”

• • • •

Here’s the joke: the unkind hermit once believed such stupid things, too.

There are five snakes slithering toward her sister. The unkind hermit shoos them away; reluctantly, they abide. It took months to realize her little friends understood her and even longer to understand they’d obey her commands, mostly. Some friends do prove more disagreeable, but that’s just to be expected when the only reward for obedience is death.

The dead snake is well-cooked. She gives half the burnt carcass to her sister, who doesn’t look nearly as horrified as she’d hoped. The unkind hermit can’t puzzle her out. She doesn’t sit like a princess should. She isn’t appalled by worms or dirt and doesn’t shift against the hard, unforgiving ground. She even has the audacity to look content as she chews too quickly, like she hasn’t eaten in days. If so, it’s a recent starvation: her body is rounder and fatter than it’d been when they were girls. And though she’s still beautiful—her sister could be three days dead and still beautiful—she’s also a shade of pale only seen in eggshells and sun-bleached bones.

All of it makes the unkind hermit uneasy. Reflexively, she bares her teeth as her sister flips through the journal once more, frowning like the words are backward and upside down. “Again?” the unkind hermit asks. “What’s so hard to understand? You think we all want love? That we’re all capable of it?”

Toads, toads, and venom everywhere.

Her sister doesn’t even look up, like the unkind hermit isn’t a wild and dangerous thing, like she can be trusted to safely corral her snakes rather than letting them roam and bite free. Never mind the unkind hermit is corralling her snakes; she could kill anyone so easily. Why isn’t her sister afraid? Why won’t she just run away?

Is it because her prince is coming? It must be nice, knowing that rescue is guaranteed. The unkind hermit has never been so fortunate. To think, she’d spent weeks lost in these woods, terrified that she might stumble over her sister’s rotting corpse, half-eaten by wild animals, bones sunken in the moss. She’d feared that more than anything, finding her little sister.

But then the village stories. The lucky, lovely girl.

“Lucky,” her sister says flatly, when the unkind hermit tells her so. “Lucky.”

Two garnets spill like blood drops. Her sister brushes them away, flipping to a blank page with violently shaking fingers.

“Let me tell you how lucky I’ve been,” she says, and—ignoring the cascade of white petals—begins to write.

• • • •

Once upon a time, there were two sisters. The eldest looked like their mother, and so their mother loved her best. The youngest looked like their father, and so their father loved her best. None of them were very happy, but they were happy enough, at least until the girls’ father suddenly dropped dead.

The youngest, grieving alone, tried to live up to her father’s memory, to embody all the things he’d said a good girl should be. Kind. Generous. Never insistent, never questioning. Accepting things as they are, rather than constantly demanding them to change. Thus, the youngest girl accepted that Mother would always despise her face, and never once asked her sister, “Why don’t you love me anymore?” For Sister had loved her, once. They used to play together, hide together, do whatever they could to subtly shift their parents’ moods. They never used each other’s names, disliking the ones they were born into; instead, they always signed the same shape. There was never a word for ‘sister who didn’t love you.’

But now Sister refused to speak in code. She bullied, she teased, and did nothing but look away when Mother smacked the youngest across the face. Fighting back wasn’t an option. Good girls didn’t shout; they didn’t hit, they didn’t complain. They did as they were told. So, the youngest kept her voice gentle and kept her words kind and never protested any housework, no matter how late the hour or how grueling the task. And when an old woman asked for water from the well, the youngest gladly fetched it because this kindness made her worthy of love, even if nobody loved her anymore. Because if she was worthy, perhaps that might change. If she was worthy, then maybe someday—

And someday came, he came. “Come now, maiden. Tell me why you weep.” And she told him the truth; of course, she did. Six pearls, six diamonds, and twelve words in reply.

And because she was desperate, because she was stupid, she never found it suspicious that he instantly fell in love, that he not only bedded her but wedded her, a strange girl from the woods, a commoner with no parents and broad, muddy feet. He said such sweet things, though. He gave such lovely gifts. He rescued her; he saved her. She owed him so much.

So, she didn’t complain when he told her to play mute and speak only when they were safely alone. She obeyed every command: never befriended a soul, never left the palace by herself. Indeed, she was rarely allowed to leave at all—but this was only to protect her. He reminded her everyday: think of everyone who might beat her and bleed her just for a handful of sparkling diamond words. And she had him, didn’t she? She had fine clothing and fine food and a dozen handmaidens at her beck and call. So long as she didn’t break the rules. So long as she pretended her handmaidens weren’t her husband’s spies first.

She pretended. She obeyed. It would be so ungracious, otherwise.

But then the first violation: she did befriend someone, her funniest handmaiden, a mischievous, fearless girl who knew how to speak without speaking aloud. They had long conversations between them, laughter in the dark, and one time—just one time—dared to sneak out to the market.

And then the prince found out, and that handmaiden disappeared.

Finally, the youngest girl began asking questions, sometimes of her husband but mostly of herself: had Father raised a woman or a caged bird? Was it enough to be safe when she could also be happy? But questions were the third violation, and so she was locked away, thrown into a dungeon with only one other prisoner: a wetly rotting body, her fearless handmaiden’s corpse.

The youngest girl was never tortured, never starved. There was no sunlight, but only one rule: tell her husband stories until he went away again. She refused to do so, at first, tried using her blessing as a bargaining chip. But then he came back carrying a small child and a sharp knife, and the youngest daughter folded after the very first slice.

But when she was alone again with only a corpse for company, she told her dead handmaiden that, someday, she’d escape. Fingers moving in the dark, one-way conversations. Apologies to the departed. Vows to the dead. She never promised revenge; that was not in her power, nor was it her nature, no matter her more violent, desperate dreams. Instead, she made the only oath she knew she could keep, that nobody would ever die for her again.

• • • •

The unkind hermit closes the journal, shaking her head, shaking her head again. Her sister’s story is—it’s unacceptable. None of this can be true. Kind girls get kind futures, and this is, this—

She chucks the journal at her sister—who catches it, barely—and makes a sharp ‘X’ across her mouth with both hands. LIAR.

Her sister tilts her head, bewildered, vaguely amused. Which part?

The unkind hermit opens her mouth—but the sound of a horn cuts her off, a foreign, frightening sound that has no place in these woods. Her sister straightens, perfectly still, every inch of her body listening. The unkind hermit remembers that stillness. They would wait like this whenever their parents fought, silently holding hands, listening to see whose footsteps were coming, to see which daughter would be in trouble that day.

But now a prince is coming, and that’s no time for holding hands.

The unkind hermit hastily puts out the fire and kicks her tent into full collapse. She can’t afford to leave it behind, will need the paltry shelter when the weather turns. Her sister only stares, frozen, useless. The unkind hermit hisses and pulls her to her feet.

“Move,” the unkind hermit says, and they do, leaving a newborn toad behind.

It’s past nightfall when they finally stop running. The unkind hermit doesn’t bother setting up the tent, just sits beside a particularly large, hooked tree and tries to decide whether they should climb up and out of sight, or stay below where there’s room to run. Her sister, sitting nearby, is staring again. Spreading her arms.

Why? Why didn’t you leave me behind?

Loftily, the unkind hermit ignores her; otherwise, she’d be forced to admit that she can’t answer the question. Who cares what happens to her sister? So what if this prince gives her a whole library to read, then chops off her head once the pages are spent? If the unkind hermit hands her over, she might even get a reward. It’s certainly what Mother would do.

Then again, what prince would honor a deal with a witch when he could just burn her instead? Or maybe he’d mount her head on the wall like a stag. The villagers would probably throw a parade.

Besides, for all her bitterness and all her rage, the unkind hermit’s face hasn’t matched Mother’s in a long time.

She takes the journal back from her sister. If I bowed and scraped to rich people, she writes, neither of us would be here, remember?

Her sister squints in the moonlight, then snorts and rolls her eyes. Would it have been THAT hard to fetch the water?

And the unkind hermit rocks back. Because her sister thinks—

Then she laughs because of course that’s what her sister thinks. Let her. Let her believe that the unkind hermit refused to help at all, that she fetched a cup of water only to dump it over the fairy’s head. Let her believe—

But her sister inches closer, frowning. “Did you get the water?”

The unkind hermit tsks at her, snatching orange lilies from the grass. If her sister has been leaving a trail like this, it’s no wonder the prince caught up so quickly.

Her sister exhales, long and slow, and pokes her sharply with the journal.

The unkind hermit hums insolently and pointedly looks away.

Her sister says a dirty word and throws vomit-petals straight at her face.

The unkind hermit recoils, batting away the flower. “Of course, I got the water,” she snaps. “I just wasn’t gracious about it.” And why should she have been? Why should a noble or fairy expect her to simper while doing them a favor they could easily do themselves? And anyway, why should the unkind hermit get her sleeves dirty just because they were cheaper sleeves? She hadn’t even wanted some magical blessing. Really, how many precious stones did one family need? She’d only gone because Mother had demanded it, and had been relieved when the old woman had disappeared. She’d even been stupid enough to think that—maybe this time—things really would get better. They’d be rich as thieves, after all. Mother would never have to work again. Surely, she’d finally be happy. Surely, they could all be a family once more.

Well. No one here is that stupid now.

The unkind hermit understands that a family once broken is broken forever. Her sister has no reason to love her, and there’s no point in hoping otherwise. Hope is a jinx, and she’s quite cursed enough. They’ll never be able to start over again.

But she won’t abandon her sister, either; doesn’t need to. This prince may be a monster, but he’s also a man, and men are fickle, bored so easily. When he gets tired of the chase, when he remembers that he’s a prince and doesn’t need anyone else’s gold, he’ll give up and return home. Then her sister will leave, choosing her next husband more carefully, and the unkind hermit will live here, alone. The story will make sense again. It has to, because if it doesn’t—

Then maybe the unkind hermit deserves a future, after all. Maybe she’s been suffering all these years for absolutely no reason.

Her sister watches her, gaze heavy. The unkind hermit doesn’t like the weight of it. She’s not sure she can withstand scrutiny; she’s not used to being seen.

She avoids her sister’s eyes, takes back the journal. Writes not a story, but a personal creed:

Snakes make better friends than fairies. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Then the unkind hermit gives her sister first watch, curls up in the dark, and falls asleep.

• • • •

Once upon a time, there were two sisters. The eldest looked like their mother, and so their mother loved her best. The youngest looked like their father, and so their father loved her best. But likely, neither parent loved either child very much. The sisters were pawns in a bitter game, one their father lost when he suddenly dropped dead.

The youngest tried to become everything Father wanted her to be. But she hadn’t understood what a caged-bird-woman that was. “Be kind,” he’d said, but he was not kind, not unless people fawned over him first. “Don’t question,” he’d said, because he didn’t like being questioned. Tantamount to nagging, the first of sins. “Don’t raise your voice,” because shrill noises were unpleasant, because women and children should be silent unless asked to speak. In the end, Father’s lessons boiled down to three things:

Don’t be like your mother.

Do what I say.

Marriage is hell. Accept it with a smile.

And the youngest learned it well. She and her sister both learned all the wrong things. Like that love always came with caveats and conditions. Like some people were simply too wicked to love.

But now, the youngest girl disagrees. Oh, she’d tried to believe such things once, but she’s loved too many terrible people: her father, her mother. Her murderer-husband. If she can still miss the man she’d once believed him to be, well. Perhaps no one is unlovable. Perhaps there are only people who cannot love.

You loved me once, Sister. Maybe you don’t anymore. Maybe you can’t anymore. Either way, I still love you. I don’t think I forgive you yet, but I love you, and you don’t deserve any of this. Not what Mother did—no child could deserve that. Not how Father treated you—you were stubborn and brave. And not how the fairy cursed you, either. You were a spiteful little shit, but you always told the truth.

I don’t forgive you, but I think maybe I could. If we only had more time.

But the prince will never stop. You don’t know him as I do. It’s not that he needs my diamond words; it’s that he wants them. That’s all it takes. He’ll capture us, and you’ll be—you, all defiance and self-loathing, and you are not allowed to die in some half-cocked bid for redemption. No one is allowed to die for me, not ever again.

I will go east and leave him a trail. Run fast as you can in the opposite direction. I might get a few happy days before he finds me. If not, well. Perhaps this was always my fate. I wish I could say I’d kill him, or die trying. I do dream about it, sometimes, choking him with my own hands—but violence has never been my strength. I don’t know how to be brave that way.

But this, at least, I can do. This is what I’m choosing to do, and not because of who Father raised me to be. This is who I’m fucking deciding to be.

I’ve left you the means for a happy ending. Take it, Sister, and live.

• • • •

The unkind hermit reads the story when she wakes the following morning, a pile of sapphires and snowdrops in place of her sister. She reads it again, then reads it again, then kicks a tree and probably breaks a toe.

She closes her eyes.

So, her sister has decided to play the martyr. How typical, how predictable. The unkind hermit is only angry because she should have seen it coming. It’s not because her sister had said I could forgive you and then left before that miracle could come true. It’s not because she’d freely offered her love, full well knowing it might never be returned. It’s not that the unkind hermit is sad or afraid; she isn’t, this is better, this is the best ending she could hope to get. Sapphires are better than sisters, after all. They’re beautiful, precious, infinitely more useful. She could buy herself new clothes, a real home. She could eat food born outside her own mouth.

She could have this future her sister’s given her.

But from the bottom of her spiteful, serpent heart: fuck letting her sister win.

“Help me,” the unkind hermit says, and catches the two snakes that fall from her lips. “Help me kill these men without killing my sister, and I’ll never eat any of you again.”

• • • •

The captive princess, once the runaway princess, once the youngest girl who only wanted to be good, wakes up in the middle of the night to the sounds of gurgling, terror, and asphyxiation.

She sits up as best she can, arms still bound behind her, and sees two large, red snakes slithering toward her. She freezes, but they don’t attack, just curl around her ankles like they’re waiting further instructions. Others have not been so lucky. The campsite is a veritable pit of toads and snakes, and the prince’s men are writhing and twitching against the ground. Her sister is pushing one quivering guard against a tree. She’s kissing him. She’s speaking a word into his mouth.

The guard claws at his throat, bloody froth dripping down his chin. Her sister wipes her own lips as he collapses face first into the grass.

She looks at the captive princess.

“That was a terrible story,” she says. “Just completely collapsed halfway through. Tell me a better one tonight, or I’ll let the snakes eat you.”

But her fingers draw two circles entwined in the air, and the captive princess’s breath catches because that means—

“Fuck off,” the captive princess says, smiling so wide, teary. “It’s your goddamn turn.”

Her sister laughs and turns away, and—oh, the prince is still alive. He’s been gagged, pale and bloody, tied down by snakes that are—too large, they’re just too large to have come out of her sister’s mouth. And yet.

“Any last words for him?” her sister asks, as the prince tries and fails to break free.

The captive princess considers that.

He’d demanded her stories too, once. She could tell him another one now, one where she and her sister leave these woods together, where they teach each other different ways to speak, different ways to survive. They’d find a house together, in this story, one bought by stones and defended by snakes. They’d learn to forgive one another, live with one another. They’d learn, slowly, what it means to be happy.

But he wouldn’t understand such an ending, and anyway, he doesn’t deserve any of her fucking stories.

So, the captive princess meets his eyes and only says, “Choke.”

A diamond the size of her fist tumbles out of her mouth. Her sister unties her and picks it up. She walks to the prince. Straddles him, ungags him. “Ah, ah, ah,” she says. “Open up.”

He makes such terrible little sounds when he dies.

The rescued princess stares at her husband’s dead face. Perhaps she feels sorrow deep down, perhaps guilt, but mostly she’s exhausted. Mostly relieved. Eventually, she drags herself to her feet, takes her sister’s hand.

“So,” she says, “about that story.”

Her sister grins.

“Once upon a time,” she says as they begin to walk, freely dripping snakes and stones behind them, “there were two sisters who found one another, who refused to die in the woods . . .”

©2023 by Carlie St. George.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlie St. George is a writer and Shirley Jackson Award finalist from Northern California. Her work has been published in Nightmare, The Dark, We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction, and several other anthologies and magazines. Her debut short story collection You Fed Us to the Roses is available from Robot Dinosaur Press. Find her talking about television, horror movies, fanfic, writing, and other nerdy things on Bluesky or at her blog mygeekblasphemy.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

To the Waters and the Wild

Izzy Wasserstein | 674 words

To hear us sing is to know /your/ desire. The one you call captain, ruled by many longings, orders himself bound to the mast. Salt-cracked hands secure him. The prow’s a wedge to split the sea, carrying you toward /your/ fate: a role in /his/ story. /Your/ fellow sailors, doomed, eager to live and die as men do, seal /their/ ears with wax, seeking salvation in ignorance. What do you seek, o brave soul, with that beard you wear like armor?

Scholars, driven to categorize, to define, to master, sail to /their/ deaths on these rocks, wishing to know us, to understand these wings, blacksleek as ravens, to chart the chords of these songs, to make all knowledge /theirs/. (Forgive us, o sailor, you who even now hesitate, wax in hand, hearing this song on the wind. These mouths, neither bird nor human, struggle with /your/ language of possession. We are unowned, unowning.)

Men with bright eyes seek us out, hungry for these bodies, or the bodies they imagine. They assume these melodies are for them, as though these forms, thin and taut as bows; thick and sleek as seals; scarred or baby-soft, though nearly always scarred; as though this skin darker than you wear, o sailor, or lighter than the milk-white north; as though these cocks and cunts and many shapes beside; as though these soaring wings, hair and feathers, fingers and claws are /theirs/. They think they can claim all things, until sharp-toothed coral educates them.

And you. What do you seek, o sailor?

/Your/ captain claims the ship, as though the love of it is not held in common among the crew, as though the hold is not a kind of womb, and its codes of male companionship a rough blanket thrown over you. Why are you surprised, o hesitating one? Bird-eyes are keen, but we mean no cruelty. Some among us have been (re)birthed from ships and rough talk and masks we wore for others, for ourselves.

Know this, o brave soul: we sing not for the proud captain, nor any scholar or lecher, nor even for you. These polyphonies of surf and sun, of winedark depths and fickle sky, of families lost and families true, these anthems of hope to greet first light, and dirges for the lost, these songs are for the singers, for the joy of creation, or for no purpose at all, for music needs neither justification nor reason.

We sing, and balls of wax drop from /your/ hands—if they are hands and /yours/. The mast-bound captain screams the name that some parent thrust upon you. He thinks you in thrall to us, for he imagines this song is a promise, that it offers him a way home, or power, or vengeance upon /his/ enemies. We make no promises, o sailor, not even of safety. We do not command these waters, these shoals thick with sun-bleached bone. Here we roost to be far from the troubles of those who would force or claim or control us. But you are welcome here, o longing one. Fear not for that beard, the pitch of /your/ voice, the masks you have worn. Behold the power of these endless forms most beautiful, and know you can find a place among us. This sailor-shape, you may keep or change. Or did you think form is destiny? Did not sister Circe show you that some people are pigs? And some men are not men.

The one you call captain raves. You cast aside /your/ spear and dive. The sea greets you like a lover, inconstant, adoring. Stone and coral tear, but you, o brave soul, know fear and pass through it. You stagger up the beach, sun-blistered, bleeding, water caressing you like sunlit wings, and a smile you thought forever lost spreads wide. These voices swell, joining waves and wind, and we welcome you into the chorus, to sing of bodies and selves, of all they think unchangeable, of all that could be, o sister.

©2023 by Izzy Wasserstein.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Izzy Wasserstein is a queer and trans woman who teaches writing and literature at a public university and writes fiction and poetry. She shares a home with her spouse Nora E. Derrington and their animal companions. She’s an enthusiastic member of the 2017 class of Clarion West. Her short story collection All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From (a Lammy award finalist) was released with Neon Hemlock Press in 2022. Her debut novella, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is forthcoming with Tachyon Press in March 2024.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Mindfulness and the Machine

A.T. Greenblatt | 1786 words

The first time you can’t answer the question, you are already within the Great Dragon.

Any bad decisions today? Mindy’s text reads.

Around you, the Great Dragon’s pistons squeal, stutter, while the crew’s stressed voices echo above and below you. And Ari’s already shoving coveralls into your arms while striding forward and you’re hurrying after them, ducking under pipes and beams, the smell of grease and burnt plastic all-consuming.

You’re tempted to text back “Nope” and deal with the lie later. But you’re moving, everything’s moving and you were only supposed to be walking home from your admin job when you saw this magnificent Dragon two blocks over and ran to catch up. You swore, time and again, not to do anything reckless, impulsive, ill-conceived, hadn’t you seen what happened to your older siblings, aren’t you the practical child, the responsible one, the youngest yet the wisest?

And still, you ran alongside the ever-moving Dragon, carrying nothing but an oversized tote bag with lunch’s leftovers and rarely used lip balms, grabbed onto one of its massive legs and called up “Need some help?” Before you could worry about the consequences, the fall, you were climbing, you were being pulled through a hatch in the Dragon’s glistening haunches, clasped on the shoulder by a willowy, disheveled, greased-splattered person who was shouting over the chaos of the Dragon’s inner workings that the crew could always use an extra hand.

“I’m Ari Activist,” they shout. “What’s your name?”

“Melody Misadventure!”

“Oh,” they say. “Well, that explains a lot.”

Your fingers hover over the phone as you debate your answer. Weigh the truth.

“New girl! Help here!” Ari shouts from above.

Ask me tmrrw. You text back before you put the phone on airplane mode, yank on the coveralls, and are carried away.

• • • •

The second time you can’t answer the question isn’t the second time Mindy asks it. But it’s the first time in the month of being within the Dragon that you have the space to consider it.

Mindy’s snubbed messages are queued up like your many siblings at mealtimes.

You need to answer me, Melody. It’s been twenty-nine days. Have you avoided mishap today? is the youngest text.

“Who the hell’s that?” Ari asks, glancing at your screen, as you sit shoulder to shoulder scarfing down an energy bar during a ten-minute lull.

“No one,” you reply, sliding the phone away before Ari can get a good look.

But your fingers are too sore and grease-chapped to lie. It was a week of harrowing fourteen-hour shifts, navigating the Dragon through the narrow streets of V___, convinced at every turn you were going to miss a redirect and the Dragon’s great foot would come down on a young family staring in open-mouthed wonder instead of the cleared road. Within this new life, you’re always on, always going like the Great Dragon. This monstrous plaything of a rich and bored techwiz, abandoned when he realized how much work a perpetual motion machine was. A Dragon that cannot be stopped, cannot be rerouted from its stubborn path, only nudged and inched onto a less disastrous course by a worn-weary crew.

No mishaps you reply and neglect to mention the myriad of near misses, the dangerous razor wire tightrope you pace daily within this constructed beast. How you’ve lost the time and room to be mindful of your every decision, the opportunity to weigh the benefits against the potential disaster before choosing.

You switch off your phone before she can ask the next question.

You know what’s coming anyway.

• • • •

But in the meantime, you’re slowly resurfacing from the chaos of change, taking your inner monologue’s run-on sentences and distilling lists from them, giving it all a bit of shape. The ritual is comforting, like putting on old, familiar clothes, like rediscovering yourself in this new, strange life. You’re remembering information you don’t need immediately, too. Like—

Ari joined the crew because they hated what these techwizards set in motion without thought of the consequences.

Despite its magnificent exterior and expensive components, the Dragon’s innards are held together by spray-on rubber sealant and epoxy because no one has the time or the resources or the energy to fix it properly right now.

Like Ari, everyone on the crew has a righteous reason for being here. (With names like Solomon Saint, Pallavi Progressive, and Ramona Reformer, you shouldn’t be surprised, but you still are.)

The Dragon’s walls are thin. Sometimes, on calm nights, when the Dragon is traversing open fields and needs to be averted only occasionally, you hear muffled weeping from the other cabins. But in the morning you’re not brave enough to ask, and you’re too much of a coward to offer comfort in the moment.

You’re starting to watch the world outside your cubbyhole bedroom window, noticing its quirks as the Dragon stomps through. Like—

The old matriarchs with their towering carts of semi-sentient plants and herbs, rolling their eyes at the passing Dragon.

The delivery crews on gliders clustered like flocks of birds, perched for flight at an order’s notice. Who dart and weave fearlessly between the Dragon’s feet to shave seconds off their delivery times.

Those who stop to watch the Dragon, wonder in their eyes, phones raised.

Those who don’t.

There’s joy in noticing the little details that find you, in simply observing as the Dragon moves through the world and you move with it. It feels like waking up.

Except, you are just awake enough now to worry about what’s coming.

As you attempt to solder new copper fixtures in the Dragon’s fickle right foreleg, your old fears begin to gnaw at you again. Haunted by all the potential consequences you didn’t stop to consider before you ran after the Great Dragon. But you remind yourself you aren’t like—

Your brother, Malcom, who joined a troupe of clockwork acrobats.

Or your sister, Miriam, who decided to try her hand at kraken fishing.

Or Melina,

Marvel,

Moria,

Or Max.

All your siblings who left spectacularly and returned like a Misadventure, lucky if they had all their digits. Their glorious ascent never lasted long.

You promised you wouldn’t be like them.

And still, when you turn on your phone, there are no surprises. Mindy’s question is waiting:

Melody, if you are not responsible and safe, disaster will follow. What will you do then?

For Misadventures always come crashing down.

• • • •

The third time you can’t answer the question; the worst has already happened.

No recklessness today? No harm? lights up your screen like a sick joke.

You missed a redirect.

It’s been months and none of your shims, epoxy, spot welds, or retrofits have lasted in the Dragon’s right foreleg. You were in the knee, frantically trying to align a jammed gear train as the Dragon trampled through the streets of W___. Above you, the crew’s requests rang out, frantic and demanding, and you’d been among them long enough to know without knowing that the Dragon was on a collision course with something important.

But your previous repairs were splintering, the crews’ voices pitched higher, louder and you had no other ideas, no time to think, so on impulse you jammed your arm through the moving, discorded parts and pulled.

There was panic. Pain as the gears bit down on your arm. An instant where you thought it worked.

But then there was a scream, a wet muffled sound. Then a horrible moment of silence that was infinite.

Only later did you learn the Dragon had crushed a girl and her dog.

The knee moved, freeing your arm. The structure shifted and suddenly you were falling

falling

falling

only to be caught midway down by your coverall snagging on a jutting pipe.

But it was a crash all the same.

“Nothing broken and hey, you didn’t lose a limb,” Ari reassures you, inspecting the damage as you curl up on your narrow bed. You’re not comforted. Your arm is a swollen and bruised mess, but your heart is worse.

Not all Misadventures are lucky enough to return with only severed fingers. You knew this, you promised yourself you’d be different, more mindful and calculating than your siblings. But still you ran after the Dragon because you were bored of your admin job and tired of being afraid. As if you could be some Susie Success.

You don’t leave your tiny bedroom for one day.

Two.

You are both painfully aware of your tears and the Dragon’s thin walls, but don’t have enough willpower to stop yourself. You pack your bags. Plan to disembark at the next city.

On the third day, you find a note:

We’ve all screwed up.
We’ve all been too slow or not clever enough for the Dragon.
Things would be so much worse without you, Melody.

It’s signed by everyone on the crew.

It’s not enough to convince you to unpack, but you emerge from your room, dehydrated and eyes red-rimmed, and have a late night meal with your crewmates. You’re in awe of their sympathy and compassion in the wake of your disaster. They try to make you laugh.

Your phone lights up. Any misfortunes today? Mindy texts.

“Who’s texting you in the middle of the night?” asks Ari and you show them your phone.

They go quiet for a moment as they scroll through your text history. “But why?”

“Because I didn’t want to be my namesake.” And you explain then how you downloaded Mindy to ask you these questions daily and keep you aware and pragmatic even if she was just a clever algorithm. Because you saw what happened to your siblings, how they didn’t think things through and then couldn’t face their coworkers or their friends or themselves. How your family’s every impulse always ended in disaster.

“I think I should go,” you say.

“I think you shouldn’t,” replies Ari.

“You’re courting misadventure. Literally,” you warn.

“Have you met this Dragon? This is a bigger disaster than anything we could make.”

You laugh at that. Then cry.

Because it’s true. It’s so true.

• • • •

Have you made the right decisions today, Melody? Mindy asks as the Great Dragon creaks and shifts around you. It’s been another long week of near calamities and every part of you aches and your nerves are shot. But your efforts helped mitigate some heedless destruction, which is a small thing in this giant beast, but a huge thing to the citizens of Z___ even with your mistakes and errors factored in.

Always, you text back.

Then you delete the Mindy Mindfulness app from your phone.

©2023 by A.T. Greenblatt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A.T. Greenblatt is a Nebula Award winning writer and mechanical engineer. She lives in New York City where she’s known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. Her work has been nominated for a Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon Award, has been in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, and has appeared in Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld, as well as other fine publications. You can find her online at atgreenblatt.com and on Bluesky at @AtGreenblatt.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

EXCERPT: Escape Velocity (Erewhon Books)

Victor Manibo | 5172 words

A decades-old murder looms over the glamorous clientele of a high-end space hotel . . . while an unforeseen threat percolates in the service corridors. The guests are about to experience the hospitality they deserve.

Space Habitat Altaire is the premier luxury resort in low Earth orbit, playground of the privileged and the perfect location to host reunions for the Rochford Institute. Rochford boasts only the best: the wealthiest, most promising students with the most impressive pedigrees. Complete with space walks, these lavish reunions are a prime opportunity for alumni to jockey for power with old friends and rivals—and crucially, to advance their applications to live in an exclusive Mars settlement. Earth is dying, and only the best deserve to save themselves.

Aboard the Altaire for their 25th reunion, finance magnate Ava pursues the truth about her brother’s murder during their senior year, which cast a dark shadow over their time at Rochford. Laz, ambassador and political scion, hopes to finally win Ava’s heart. Sloane, collecting secrets to conceal his family’s decline, angles for a key client. And Henry, heir to a healthcare empire, creates an unorthodox opportunity to get to Mars in a last-ditch effort to outrun a childhood secret.

While these erstwhile friends settle scores and rack up points, they fail to notice that other agendas are afoot at the Space Habitat Altaire, and their own futures aren’t the only ones at stake—“the best” will soon regret underestimating those they would leave behind on Earth.

Coming May 2024 from Erewhon Books.

From early in the novel, Manibo showcases several characters making their way aboard the prestigious Altaire space habitat, all sharing a dark history . . .

A late-twenties man weaved through the guests toward the couple. He wore a navy-blue uniform with bars on his shoulder. A deck officer, with the stiff bearing to match.

“Mr. and Mr. Gallagher,” he said. “My name is Pio Asuncion, and I’ll be your personal liaison during your stay with us here at the Altaire.”

Henry’s brow knitted. A crewman as valet, and an officer no less; that seemed unusual and excessive. He shook the man’s hand and startled at his vise-like grip. He looked at the young man’s name plate. Philippines. That’s the fourth one he’d seen so far. He wondered how many of them staffed the station.

“I’m sorry it took us a while to get here,” Henry said. “Got waylaid by small talk. And please, you can call us by our first names.”

“If that’s what you prefer,” the valet replied, with evident discomfort. “May I take your bags?”

“Pio. Sounds like C-3PO,” Nick said, pronouncing the name with overextended vowels. He handed his satchel over. “That’ll be easy to remember.”

“Yes, exactly like the robot,” Pio replied with a solicitous laugh. “But I’m here for more than just protocol. Whatever you need to enjoy your stay, I’m your man.”

“We should head up to the suite,” Nick told his husband, then turned to Pio. “We are on a bit of a schedule. Things to do, people to see…”

“Of course.” Pio promptly led them toward a receiving station and took out two thin metal boxes. Along their top edges ran an engraving of each guest’s name. Inside were a communicator earcuff, a ring of lightweight steel, and an implant injector.

“Do I really need all of these?” Henry asked.

“Your phones will work while you’re on board, but all financial transactions on the Altaire are conducted via the ring or the cuff. The subcutaneous implant is for location services and contains your security access level as you move about in the habitat. You may choose between the ring and or the cuff, but I’m afraid the implant is not optional.”

Henry blew out a deep sigh.

“If you have data privacy concerns with our location trackers, I’d be happy to address them.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I know it’s federally mandated on spaceflights,” he replied. “It’s just that I’m… feeling a bit unsettled from the flight up.”

“Yes, it’s been quite an adjustment for him,” Nick added. “Would it be alright for him to do it himself once we’re settled into our suite?”

“I’m sorry, but the doors on the station are implant-activated, including that one.” Their valet gestured at the convex glass doors that led out of the welcome lobby. “I couldn’t admit you even if I wanted to.”

Defeated, Henry pulled back his shirt sleeve, baring the inside of his left arm where he had a modest tattoo of the Southern Cross constellation. The valet gently took his forearm, searched for a firm spot, and jammed the implant device against his skin. A hiss and a subsequent beep indicated that the tracker had taken hold.

“Don’t worry,” Pio told Henry. “The implant will dissolve and be eliminated from your system by the time your leave on Sunday.”

Once done, the valet escorted the Gallaghers into the main atrium of Altaire, an oblong dome with a vaulted ceiling and thin tapering windows. In the center was a sunken garden with four rows of cherry blossom trees in full bloom. On both sides of the garden were viewing platforms, where thick strips of glass rose from the floor all the way up to the apex of the dome. Some guests gathered on one of these platforms, excitedly catching a god’s-eye view of the Earth. The other platform, the one that showed a view of empty space, was not quite as crowded.

Pio gave the couple the introductory spiel, sweeping a hand toward the platforms, the trees, the two bistros that lined the hallway leading to the promenade.

“His English is perfect,” Nick said with no attempt at concealment. Henry hoped that the valet, who walked some paces ahead of them, didn’t hear. “Unaccented too. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was born and raised in the Midwest.”

“Don’t sound so surprised, love. They all speak English over there,” Henry answered in a hushed tone, a look of reprimand on his face. “They’re very well-educated.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t,” his husband replied defensively. “I’m just pleasantly surprised, that’s all. He even gets classic pop culture references. We have loads of Fil-American friends, but the crew here, they’re all from the homeland. Isn’t that right, Pio?”

“Yes, Sir Nick,” Pio said. Henry bristled at the title, clearly the young man’s workaround to the use of first names. “And most of the staff as well. Made in the Philippines. But we all trained in Singapore or Tokyo before heading up here.”

“And did you go through accent training as well?”

“Maybe you can tell us more about the crew,” Henry interrupted. “I noticed the flags on your name plates.”

“Well, Sir Henry, the staff and crew of the Altaire come from all over the globe. As you might guess, the Captain and the top brass are all American, but the rest come from seventy different countries. As for my country, we make up about a third of the people who make this station run.”

“Why so many?”

“It’s just like how it is planetside. Most of the hospitality staff for hotels and cruise ships are from the Philippines. Been so for decades. They say it’s the English skills,” the valet replied, turning to Nick. “But really, it’s because we’re the most hospitable people on the planet. It’s in our DNA. We can’t help but please.”

“Well, I was just telling Henry here how I admire your fluency,” Nick replied. “For a Filipino, you sure could pass for a Minnesotan.”

“Thank you, Sir Nick,” Pio said, with a proud look on his face. “That’s really nice of you to say.”

The valet paused before turning back the way they were going. Henry sighed, and Nick shot him a look that he knew only too well, that of a husband who had just won an argument.

Past the cherry blossom trees, the atrium split off into passages, the most inviting of which was the outermost hall, the promenade. The few guests who weren’t mesmerized by the stars instead marveled at the lush landscapes that lined the Altaire’s upper deck. The central garden was inspired by the Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, Pio reported as they ambled out of the atrium, personally designed by the landscape artists from the famed Japanese garden itself. The Altaire rotated this display every year, and next year’s atrium would feature the Florentine Boboli Gardens. He then gestured toward the first section of the promenade: rows of roses in full bloom, hedges of camellias and geraniums, their foliage vivid and resplendent against the void of space, separated only by a pane of glass. Every few steps, a marble statue in the Roman style stood on a pedestal amidst the shrubbery.

Henry inspected one of these–a stately woman wearing a flowy gown, cradling a cornucopia under one arm and raising a sheaf of wheat with the other. He leaned in closer. Abbondanza. He touched the plinth and was surprised to find solid marble. Most landscapes were enhanced with holograms these days, to make them seem fuller, more prolific than what the conditions or the climate might allow. As they walked on, Henry ran his hands through the bushes, grazing the blossoms, pleased to feel real life in his hands.

It was then that Henry saw him. The liquid folds of his iridescent kimono-suit glimmered in gradients of citrine and emerald and oil-slick black, and the low-cut lapels exposed his chest, his solid pectorals, a slight peek at his abs. An obi of copper lamé cinched his waist. He seemed taller from when they last met, until Henry noticed the man’s three-inch platform heels.

“Hello, Sloane.”

“Henry!” he said excitedly, almost seemingly in overcompensation. “Lovely to see you, my friend.”

“It’s been a while.” Henry reached out a hand. “Have you met my husband, Nick?”

“Not formally, but it’s a small world,” Nick replied, saving Sloane from trying to find an answer. “I believe we know many of the same folks in New York.”

“You know what? You do look familiar,” Sloane replied, rattling off names and events, this one soirée in the Pines, this one weekend out on the Cape. Henry let the two carry on as though he wasn’t even there. His husband seemed charmed by him, and Henry was not surprised. Sloane always had a way with words. He’d been more reserved in their youth, but Henry recognized that now as it was then, Sloane’s silver tongue could spin words into gold.

“That settles it,” Nick announced after a while. “We should have drinks ASAP.”

“Absolutely. I’d love to catch up,” Henry replied.

“There’s a lot of ground to cover,” Sloane said, arching an eyebrow. “First, tell me–what have I missed?”

“It’s been, what, six or seven years since we bumped into each other?” Henry started. “Got married and got GDX, those are big ones.”

“Your folks finally gave you the keys to the kingdom!”

Henry smiled uneasily and quickly unloaded his burdens about running a conglomerate, the soulless tedium of board meetings and earnings calls, desperate to downplay what he’d usually consider his crowning achievement. The complaints weren’t false, and he did miss his former life of running hospitals and saving lives; most days he wished to return to it. Yet Henry had never spoken of that desire to anyone besides his own husband. Did he now express his complaints in consideration of Sloane’s feelings, knowing his circumstances and his history? Possibly. The more his old friend listened to him whine, a patient but knowing look in his eyes, the more Henry understood a weightier reason altogether: he could never pretend with the people who knew him the most.

“What I’d like to hear more of,” Nick said when he found his chance, turning to Sloane. “Are stories about Henry in high school. Was he always this…humble?”

“Actually, yes.” Sloane paused for a moment, pensive. Henry felt his breath catch as he waited. “The rest of the class bought into the hype around him, but Henry never did. He never cared about petty high school politics either. He was a good friend to everyone, no matter who they were.”

“See, when I hear someone was class president and prom king and valedictorian, I kind of have a different picture in mind,” Nick answered. “And Henry never tells me anything about his life at Rochford, so the gaps find themselves filled by my imagination.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s nothing I can share that you don’t already know,” Sloane replied. “Besides, everyone was all over Henry’s business back then. You won’t have a hard time finding people on this station who would be happy to fill the gaps for you.”

“That’s what I’m here for. The more embarrassing stories the better.”

Henry laughed. “Oh, is that the real reason why you wanted to come?”

“One of many.”

To Henry’s relief, Sloane soon excused himself, promising drinks and more stories before the weekend was over. Nick was thrilled by the teasing, and Henry gamely shooed his friend away, laughing. He cast him a sidelong glance as he left. Sloane and alcohol had always been a combustible mix, and no matter how honest he’d been with his husband, Henry still feared the stories that might unfold if Sloane made good on his promise.

• • • •

On a promenade level that overlooked the atrium, Ava Khan observed the paths of her old friends collide with each other. She knew they were all attending—one of the perks of being the CEO to the Khan-Powell Financial Group, a major investor in the Altaire, included access to the guest list and passenger manifest—but Ava needed to see with her own eyes that the three of them had actually set foot onboard. She sipped her champagne, watching Laz, Henry, and Sloane fumble through the motions of meeting again for the first time in years, the mutual awkwardness palpable even from her perch. She’d have to wrestle with the same awkwardness when she finally reunited with them, and she only hoped that a sense of ease, goodwill, or nostalgia followed soon enough. After all, she only had two days to get the answers she needed from them.

Yet even at the sight of her old friends and the possibility of coming closer to the truth, Ava held doubts about her attendance. Rochford had caused her too much pain, too much loss. Over the years, she’d conducted business with people from her class (it was unavoidable; their circle was small, incestuous) but only with the rare one-on-one encounter, delegating the bulk of negotiations and glad-handing to her staff. This reunion was different. All these people, together in one place? It would be like high school all over again. The disdainful looks, the hushed whispers. Whatever Ava had achieved outside the hallowed halls of their elite boarding school changed little of how they viewed her now. She would always be twin sister to Ashwin Khan, the heir to the family dynasty brutally murdered by Ava’s own lover, the girl from the wrong part of town. The question would loom over every encounter with her old classmates, the one question they’d all been asking for the last quarter century.

Did Ava do it?

Wouldn’t everyone love to know.

“Ah, the masses have arrived,” said a voice from beside her. The man joined Ava in leaning over the promenade rail, looking down on the rest of the Rochford class as they trickled into the station. “The fun can finally commence.”

Julian Lonsdale and his wife had been aboard the Altaire since the prior weekend, having decided to use the reunion as an excuse for a week-long getaway. Ava had arrived early too, hoping to ease herself into the toll that the reunion would no doubt inflict on her. To her dismay, she’d had to spend the last few days dodging the Lonsdales around the station.

“I don’t know about fun,” she said. “This is a work trip for me, as I’m sure it is for you.”

“Your board made you come, huh?”

Ava nodded. She had managed to avoid the Rochford ten-year reunion, but the KPF board couldn’t excuse her this time. She was the head of one of the world’s largest investment banks, and missing such a networking opportunity would be tantamount to malfeasance. Why, her attendance alone would raise the company’s stock price a few points before she even shook a single hand. Being chummy with the CEO of Lonsdale Aerospace, the primary contractor for the Mars habitats, didn’t hurt either.

“Well, I’m happy to be the plus-one, for once,” Julian replied.

“Fewer names to remember, fewer meetings to take.”

“It’s Isobel’s reunion, and she’s in the driver’s seat this weekend. I’m just the date.”

The fact that he was talking to her now proved that to be a lie. At some point soon, Ava expected Julian to court her, to float a proposal for another venture that KPF could bankroll. She didn’t resent this; that’s how most of her interactions went these days. In fact, she even welcomed it—Julian’s need ensured that he would play nice with her. She couldn’t say the same about the station’s recent arrivals.

“What was it like, with your reunion?” Ava asked him. “It was here on the Altaire too, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “Back when this had just opened. I can’t wait to see how Rochford parties, but I gotta say, the Desmarais reunions set a high bar for me.”

“I’ve heard stories,” she replied. “Like how the fate of the World Bank was decided on a literal pissing contest.”

“That wasn’t my graduating class,” Julian replied, chuckling. “Ours was the one with the brawl over the Eastern Europe cybersecurity consortium.” With unabashed relish, he recounted the intricate dealings and motives that drove twelve full-grown men to an all-out slugfest. News outlets never picked up the story, of course, nor any of scandals that inevitably occurred at these parties. They knew to protect their own reputations and had the power to do so. Yet Ava knew, everybody in their social set knew, and she allowed herself to enjoy gossip that for once did not involve her.

“Well, let’s hope no one comes to blows this weekend,” she said.

Julian raised his flute and clinked hers. “At least not unwelcome ones.”

“You know, you’re making me feel like this reunion wouldn’t be as bad as I think it will be.”

“I walked away with two things from my own reunion,” he replied, smirking. “Well, three if you count a fat lip.”

Ava laughed. “And what of the other two?”

“The first one is the knowledge that all adults are just children with money, and we act even more childish the more money we have.”

She sipped on her drink, sighing in agreement.

“The second is the realization that the past is never as good nor as bad as we remember it to be. It’s always a little worse—and a little better.”

From below them, Isobel Lonsdale waved at her husband. Julian beckoned for her to join them, and for a moment Ava worried that she would. It had been a comfort, talking to someone who wasn’t from Rochford, who wasn’t part of that history. To her relief, Julian instead chose to meet his wife downstairs, leaving Ava with the weight of his words.

She had recently started seeing a therapist for this exact reason. The intrusion of her memories had remained so persistent and troublesome even after all these years and she feared she’d have endure them for the rest of her life. She’d recall the suffocating dark of a cramped locker every time she took out sheets from the linen closet. Whenever she cooked, the gleam of the knife blade reminded her of the many times that Ashwin ran a blade through her skin. She still felt echoes of pain from long-healed fractures. This was common in cases of abuse, her therapist explained, especially given the complicated sibling dynamics of twins. In due course, Ava learned to keep these intrusions at bay, never letting their recurrence color her view of what really happened. So, yes, in some ways, her past was better than she once remembered.

But sometimes, the past is missing context. Incomplete information. This Ava resolved to rectify. There would never be satisfying answers to why Ashwin hurt her the way he did. Ava wasn’t even sure that she needed them. Yet questions surrounding Ashwin’s death were left unanswered, and the version of the truth that comforted her had long lost its potency. Julian was half-right. Ava’s past was never as bad as she thought. It was worse, she was certain, and before the weekend was over, Ava would get her friends to tell her how much worse.

• • • •

Laz felt nigh delirious as he passed from the vacuum of the airlock chamber, and his delirium heightened when he exited the lift and spilled out into the welcoming bay, a lush green lobby filled with miniature palms and flowering vines. Along the wall of this circular anteroom stood a phalanx of station officers in their regalia of crimson and gold.

He instantly noticed how they looked like him. What he had heard about the Altaire was right: it was much like a cruise ship, and as on Earth, this ship was staffed by Filipinos. Each of them wore a badge with their names and titles, and next to them, a small icon: the colors of their homeland. More than half of them bore the Philippine flag. It made him feel proud of his heritage, and proud of the people who served on the grandest luxury orbital the world had ever seen.

That surge of pride permitted him to ignore the cringe that slowly crept up his spine, one borne of an indelible childhood moment when, at his lolo’s retirement party, a guest mistook him for the wait staff and asked him for a refill after handing him an empty snifter of bourbon. Over the years, Laz had convinced himself that the mistake was easy enough to commit. His grandfather staffed his mansion exclusively with Filipinos, and they were well-attired for the occasion. Never mind that Laz was wearing a Savile Row bespoke tux while the servers wore standard-issue navy; the guest, who’d probably been on his third or fourth drink at that point, could just have easily confused a waiter for the senator’s grandson. And being the gracious grandson that he was, Laz didn’t bother with a correction; instead he made his way to the bar to fetch the old man his next round.

Laz understood that no one would make the same mistake here and now. Everyone at Rochford knew who he was, and despite the schoolyard barbs of his youth, none of his peers would make him feel so small now. Yet that murmur of cringe remained, especially as he was approached by an Altaire staffer.

She was a peppy young woman, whose warmth and energy belied a carefree disposition that hadn’t yet been battered by age. She reminded him of a distant cousin, which made Laz feel at ease.

“Ambassador, allow me to be the first to welcome you aboard the Altaire. My name is Cielo Mallari, and I’m the Head of Guest Relations.” She shook his hand firmly, then escorted him toward a receiving station. “The rest of the staff is here to attend to all your needs, but during your stay, I will be your personal liaison.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’ll manage fine on my own.”

“Yes, of course. Nonetheless, I am at your beck and call for the weekend. Whatever you need, I’m only one tap away,” Cielo replied, presenting him with his Altaire earcuff and ring.

“How was the flight in?” she asked. “I trust everything was to your satisfaction?”

“Great,” he lied, still feeling light-headed. His queasiness heightened as his liaison ran through the tech briefing and implanted him with the Altaire’s all-access tracker.

“And with that, Mr. Lazaro, we can start our tour.”

“Well, we can start with you calling me Laz,” he replied. To the Rochford class, he’d always been Lazaro or Laz, in the same way Henry was called Gallagher as often by his first name, or how Sloane never went by Charles or Chas or Chuck or Charlie. It was one of those boyish private school affectations, the type that came with the spiffy uniforms and vaguely military traditions. Also, though no one admitted it, everyone knew: in their circles, last names made it easier to impress your value on others. At Rochford, some tried to be creative by using their numeric suffixes instead, but then four boys in his class all wanted to be known as “Third.” Juan Felipe Tomas Gonzalez-Lazaro III was one of them.

Cielo nodded meekly at the request and led him into the atrium.

“Aren’t we waiting on others?” Laz asked, gesturing at the other guests still getting briefed.

“Oh, no, Ambassador. Every guest gets a private tour.”

As they walked past the sunken Japanese garden, Cielo described the technical specifications of the habitat, which held no interest to Laz. He already knew these details. His liaison’s voice gradually faded as ambient noise. He gave her a smile, made sure to glance her way every so often, but his attention was elsewhere. Soon enough, he linked his handheld with his earcuff, and pulled up a multi-level floor plan of the habitat.

“I appreciate the tour,” he finally told Cielo, “But I think I can find my way around. Do you suppose my bags have been delivered my suite?”

Cielo paused and stared into the middle distance, waiting for a prompt from her earcuff. She nodded. “If there’s anything else you need, feel free to call.” She then escorted him to the other end of the atrium, where the walkways split off into several wide corridors that led to the marble staircases up to the stateroom levels.

Laz returned to his handheld, reviewing the map and tracing a path toward his suite. He needed to change into clothes that weren’t rumpled and get a dose of motion sickness pills. Half an hour should be enough to put himself together. Transfixed by his screen, Laz absently bumped into another guest, and as he turned, he came face to face with Ava.

“Laz!” she said. “Are you all right?”

He straightened himself and tried to recover his balance with a smile. Ava leaned in for an air kiss, which he received, managing a faint hello in response.

The first thing he noticed was not the deep wells of her hazel eyes, nor the softness of her hands as they landed on his arm. No, it was the smell of lilacs in bloom: crisp, clean, with a sweetness that was barely on this side of cloying. His nose had been so desensitized, enclosed in a vessel of compressed air for the last few hours, that her smell overpowered every sensation.

“I didn’t see you on the Excelsior,” he said.

“Oh, I arrived a few days ago. I had some business to attend to,” she replied. “Were you headed to your suite?”

“Yes, they’ve just brought up my luggage and I wanted to–”

“Or we could maybe head back downstairs, see the viewing platform?”

This surprised Laz, who assumed Ava wouldn’t want to be so exposed so soon. Save for their small clique, she never held anyone at Rochford in high regard. He would have thought she’d want to avoid all the curious eyes and wagging tongues.

Ava led him back toward the atrium. The two of them walked past half-forgotten faces, names remembered only after some effort. He nodded back politely at those who acknowledged them, returning their smiles while ignoring the thoughts that nagged at him as they walked. They’re judging me. Judging us. The unease was almost soured the fact that Ava had let him take her arm.

He studied her closely as they moved through the crowd, and if Ava noticed, she never let on. The eager waves, the air kisses, the let’s-catch-up-laters. She was faking it. He wondered what exactly this was supposed to mask. Was it the agony of being among these people, the kids who hated her, now grown into adults who no doubt hate her still? Was it the shame of the divorce? Or was it the awkwardness of being with him?

“This isn’t so bad, is it?” he whispered. Ava dropped her head and shot him a look that said, you can’t possibly be serious. That single glance reminded Laz of how deeply she knew him. Their unspoken bond may have slackened as they aged, but it was still there.

Out on the viewing platform, Laz watched Ava’s face as she took in the stars. His feelings for her were as strong as they’d been when they were children. The years hadn’t changed that either. Through her transition and after, through their short-lived relationship, Ashwin’s death, and the varied detours their lives had taken, he always came back to her.

“I heard about Fallon,” he said. “I tried to call.”

“Sure, yes, of course. I’m sorry, the last few months have been hectic. I meant to get back to you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he replied, waving it off sheepishly. “You had a lot to deal with.”

“I haven’t been a good friend to you in a long time, have I?”

“We’re here now. That’s all that matters.” After a while, Laz said, “We should have dinner, get the group back together: you, me, Henry, Sloane. Maybe after the welcome reception?”

“Perfect,” Ava replied, more eagerly than he’d anticipated. “We all have much to talk about.”

Copyright © 2023 by Victor Manibo. Excerpted from Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo. Published by permission of Erewhon Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Victor Manibo is a speculative fiction writer living in New York City, and his writing is influenced by his experiences as an immigration and civil rights lawyer. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, he also writes about the lives of people with these identities.

Book Review: Skin Thief by Suzan Palumbo

Arley Sorg | 1747 words

Skin Thief
Suzan Palumbo
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781952086427
Neon Hemlock, September 30, 2023, 167 pgs

Because I love short fiction, I often end up reviewing anthologies for this column. I was drawn to Suzan Palumbo’s debut collection because I’ve encountered her fiction out in the wild and found that her stories consistently speak to me. There are many, many anthologies and collections¹ out there, and each author or editor will have their variations, their preferred approach. One thing I’ll note up front is that Palumbo’s book gathers a fair number of stories, but most of them are free to read online. I have commented occasionally that I really appreciate when anthologies and collections bring material to the fore which might otherwise be hard or even impossible to access, books which shine a light on works that might have otherwise been missed. It is perhaps the case with Palumbo, as it is with many newer writers, that the bulk of her publications to-date happen to appear in online magazines². But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this book isn’t worth the money. There are gems in here which are not free to read online, including “Kill Jar,” which is original to this book. So I’ll discuss some of the pieces which appeared in print, beginning with this original work.

“Kill Jar” is on the longer end of the short story spectrum, landing somewhere over 9,600 words, and could be seen as Suzan Palumbo’s gift to folks who purchase this collection. The opening is fascinating, elegant, and just strange enough: Adelaide is a child growing up around a garden of poisonous plants. The prose is carefully written and deliberately evocative, working on the reader in multiple ways. In one of the more memorable scenes Palumbo juxtaposes a serious father obsessed with these lethal plants and Adelaide’s play. Subtle word choices and phrases embellish this dichotomy, creating something absolutely marvelous. Palumbo takes the emotions a step deeper, sketching Adelaide as lacking even basic affection in her life, as her father treats her somewhat like an experiment. Adelaide grows, and her father brings her into his work even more, trusting her to help with measurements, experiments, and so on. He says she’ll be fine as long as she does what he tells her to do—but this is moments after she has demonstrated to the reader some of the ways in which she has trouble following his instructions. Which is fair, because, dear reader, part of the creepiness here is that the father is kind of sketchy. Then again, he’s her father, and “working together” just might be the only kind of affection he will afford her. Add to all of this Adelaide’s vivid nightmares, plus the drugs Dad makes her take. And, just as Palumbo has pulled you into this dreamlike setup, she drops in a little bit of mystery about who Adelaide might be, and what might have happened to her mom—a perfect flicker of shadow to make the reader curious, but not so much that we can outright guess exactly what the outcome of the story will be. I mean, yes, you will probably have an idea or two, but trust me, you’ll still feel the need to keep reading to know exactly how it all plays out. And you won’t be disappointed in following that curiosity.

For folks looking for an action-driven plot, this is not the story for you. Many who love horror or generally darker stuff will gravitate towards gritty tales, jarring images, and acts of outright violence. This one is also not for you. But a line from deeper within the story is telling: “Violence is more than laying hands . . . .” Adelaide’s story is told mostly through internalization. Think vibes, atmosphere, and wonderfully rich subtext. The narrative is as much about the emotional journey of a young girl discovering who she is as it is about setting and ideas and mystery. Part of that journey is about grappling with what you are, and what that means to the people around you, which isn’t always pleasant. A sneakier bit of theme, by my read, is about what I’ll call personal colonization—someone taking an individual as a child and alienating them from their cultural heritage. It’s also just . . . a perfectly messed up story, and beautifully told. The climax is rewarding, visceral, striking. Many readers may see a few things coming, but ultimately, the story does everything it should: it’s a great piece which is well worth the price of admission. For readers out there familiar with Palumbo’s work, it delivers those deeper meanings, those cathartic notes that we really love to see in fiction. If that sounds like your kind of story, then just stop here. Go get this book immediately.

“Her Voice, Unmasked” originally appeared in issue one of Michael Kelly’s Weird Horror magazine. While I haven’t kept up with the publication, this story makes me wonder what other fantastic works might appear in those pages. The piece is told from the perspective of Justine, an automaton built to sing. But we encounter Justine as someone who has been built expressly as a conduit for an inventor’s “genius”—we meet Justine and immediately feel a sense of profound discomfort at the complete and ruthless control he exerts over her body. And if we want to use the word “genius” properly, then let’s apply it to Palumbo’s storytelling, which can evoke this discomfort in the space of a few lines. If you won’t allow “genius,” then let’s at least call it a quick bit of impressive work by Palumbo, a narrative delivery which is unsettling, effective, and again, immediately rich in subtext. Justine must sing at the opera, and the inventor wants her to move the audience, not just imitate the sounds. But the perspective, the pressure expressed, the narrative focus, all come together to make this tale superb.

When she is not training, Justine is used as a teaching device, similar to a plaster model, a dummy, a prop against which dancers can compare their form. The duality here is the dehumanizing of someone sentient and the ways the actual humans can be both alive but crammed into restrictive types and roles and behaviors. There is also an irony at play in having a “real” person obsessively imitating an automaton in their search for “perfection.” Justine has a conversation with one of these girls who was passed over for an important performance, and there is something really wonderful that Palumbo brings out in their encounter, something which is seriously skillful but hard to explain here.

There are many things a reader (or reviewer) could look at and discuss in this story. The sense of “otherness” for example, of being out of place, which thrums quietly between the lines, but which Palumbo brings to the fore when Justine is dressed for her performance, her alloy body a contradiction to the cloth finery designed for flesh. A major theme of the piece is autonomy, and it may seem like an obvious direction, to tell a story about autonomy via an automaton. But it’s a breathtaking telling, with nuanced elements of the theme thoughtfully played together, allowing careful readers to consider everything from unusual angles; particularly through mirrored and overlapping circumstances—all making for an excellent story. More than this (at least on my read), it’s about embracing yourself, your entire self, for all your horror and wonder, and the power you can find in doing so.

“The Bride” originally appeared in Neon Hemlock’s original anthology Unfettered Hexes, which was edited by publisher dave ring, and was one of the books that made me start to consider Neon Hemlock as a purveyor of truly great fiction. Palumbo, as usual, delivers lovely prose and some great lines right at the start, creating mood and, importantly, distinctiveness—personality. Alice likes being independent, and in a situation that many will find relatable, she is under pressure from folks around her to find a husband. Palumbo is an expert with irony, and here Alice makes wedding dresses for a living. Of course, she’s very good at it. One night, she sees something on the side of the road, perhaps “someone,” who is clothed in a gorgeous, shimmering dress. As a skilled dressmaker, Alice is curious. Not long after the sighting, people–well, bad men—start dying mysterious deaths. Meanwhile, Alice feels drawn to find the ominous figure she’d glimpsed before, which the reader instinctively knows is connected (but trust me, you’ll feel eager to keep reading to find out where it’s all going). It’s familiar and fun, but Palumbo consistently breathes new and interesting life into familiar things, utilizing depth of character, and infusing narratives with layered meaning, not to mention sly characterization and deft emotionality. This one is about loneliness, uniqueness, and not quite being seen, not quite being accepted. For me, it’s about finding your place in the world, as told through a horror lens.

Suzan Palumbo is a consistently great writer. Even if many of these pieces can be found online, she’s doing you a favor by making it easier for you, gathering them together into a convenient package. Frankly, in my opinion, the original piece alone is worth the money. If you like dark, literary, thought-provoking fiction, make this book your next read.

¹. You’ll find the terms “collection” and “anthology” vary greatly depending on the source, genre, or even the country. Here I am following the Locus Magazine definitions, where “collection” signifies a book gathering work by a single author, and “anthology” signifies a book gathering stories by multiple authors.

². Here is her publication history according to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, but please note that they are not always exhaustive; they are a great starting point but you can’t assume they are always complete: bit.ly/3FDhdcX.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arley Sorg is an associate literary agent at kt literary. He is a two-time World Fantasy Award Finalist and a two-time Locus Award Finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards, for his work as a critic as well as his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus, associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer, and book reviewer, and ran a series of interviews on his site: arleysorg.com. He has been a guest instructor or speaker at a range of events—and for a variety of audiences—from Worldcons to WisCons, from elementary students to PhD candidates. He was a guest critiquer for the 2023 Odyssey Writing Workshop and the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West Workshop. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in the SF Bay Area and writes in local coffee shops when he can. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Book Review: The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw

Aigner Loren Wilson | 604 words

The Dead Take the A Train
Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9781250867025
Tor Nightfire, October 2023, 400 pgs

The Dead Take the A Train is a dark fantasy occult horror from first-time collaborators Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw. The novel follows Julie as she works as a hired gun dealing with the magical underbelly in New York City. When a friend from the past, Sarah, comes into town to stay with her, Julie takes on a job to get back at Sarah’s abusive ex. There’s more going on than Julie or Sarah realizes, placing both women—and a whole lot of other people—in danger.

With Kadrey and Khaw behind the wheel of The Dead Take the A Train, there’s a blend of voices and even genres. Both authors write within the horror and dark fantasy genre but with slightly different styles. Kadrey leaning more toward the mysterious noir side and Khaw who dips into the cosmic horror. There are multiple POV characters throughout the story that allow for the authors to present varying styles without making the book feel hard to follow or place. When in Julie’s chapters, the reader gets a wonderful look behind the curtain of the fictionalized NYC in the book and who the major players are. While in Julie’s ex’s chapters, we’re treated to a comedic corporate horror tale of body possessions and cosmic takeovers.

One of the things I loved about the book was how the authors made sure to let readers know that magic has a price, and while it’s different for everyone, no one is free from losing something to the powers that be. It’s a constant theme throughout the book: the social ladder of magic. Too often Julie is at the bottom, doing the work for those at the top. This dirty work and her own belief in her self-worth keeps her reaching for coke, alcohol, and anything she can to numb the horrors she’s seen and brought about.

Another aspect that made the novel endearing and entertaining was the soft, flirty romance between Julie and Sarah. Kadrey and Khaw balance the cuteness blooming between them with a slow burn ‘will they, won’t they’ element where queerness wasn’t the thing keeping them a part, but each of the characters’ own self-image and internal belief systems interfering. Julie doesn’t believe she’s good enough for anything but cleaning up the mess, and Sarah is beaten down so much the idea that someone like Julie could want her is too out of this world for her to believe.

Along with multiple characters showcasing the wide and diverse magical world in the book, there are also different forms of magic that help give the world a deep and ancient feeling. The authors’ attention to city living and the habits of those that live in a metropolis creates, at times, a textured world, and other times lulls readers into a cozy feeling like snuggling up on a couch after a long day. There’s truly so much to love about The Dead Take the A Train — from the characters, to the setting, to the humor that rolls off the page. Readers who love a good comedic cosmic horror will fall instantly in love with The Dead Take the A Train.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black writer of speculative fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and games. She serves as a senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons and has guest-edited issues of Fireside Fiction and Apparition Literary Magazine. Her work has appeared in FIYAH, Anathema, Arsenika, and other publications. When she’s not writing or editing for others, she’s learning, hiking, or loving on her fur babies—both human and animal. To check out her books, games, bread bakes, and other writings visit her website (aignerlwilson.com).

Book Review: Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne Gilman

Chris Kluwe | 889 words

Uncanny Vows
Laura Anne Gilman
Trade Paperback / eBook
ISBN: 9781534415966
Saga Press, November 2023, 384 pages

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month we’re traveling back in time to a vividly reimagined pre-WWI America, stuffed full of eldritch things that go bump in the night while leaving plenty of mysteries to solve, in Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne Gilman.

Uncanny Vows is the sequel to Gilman’s earlier work, Uncanny Times, and continues the adventures of the Harker siblings, Rosemary and Aaron, as they hunt fey creatures (collectively “the uncanny”) across the American Northeast (accompanied, naturally, by their oversized part-hellhound all-good-boy dog, Bother). Both Aaron and Rosemary are Hunters, humans with traces of fey blood in their lineage who use that power to seek out and destroy harmful supernatural threats, but after the incidents of the first book, they’re worried their future with the Hunters may be in peril (a fear caused in no small part due to a dangerous secret they’re hiding from the other Hunters). Tasked with a new mission to appease a wealthy benefactor, Rosemary and Aaron have no choice but to confront the problem at hand while trying to figure out a way forward that still sees them (and Bother) safe—both from the eldritch things they seek as well as the human concerns dogging their shadows.

Let me first say that reading the first book is not necessary to enjoy Uncanny Vows, as Gilman does an excellent job naturally referencing the events therein, though you as a reader will miss out on some nuance if you jump straight into this one. That out of the way, I want to talk about the thing I most enjoyed about Uncanny Vows, which is that this is a book completely unafraid to take its time getting where it wants to go, and is all the better for doing so. It is an exquisitely slow burn following the twists and turns of the Harkers as they work to uncover what is actually going on, and Gilman understands that no amount of excessive action can substitute for the actual horror of a carefully constructed world slowly peeling back its normal-seeming exterior to reveal the alien nature writhing beneath the skin. It’s clear that the 1914 America the Harkers inhabit has been researched to exacting standards, evinced by both the surrounding worldbuilding as well as the dialogue and inner character reflections, and it performs spectacularly as the architecture of the story—a constantly rising violin note that subtly rachets the tension higher and higher, where threats are constantly referenced and imagined, but never quite appear where you expect them to.

The second thing that stood out to me is the relationship between Rosemary and Aaron and how much it enhanced the story. As siblings, the two frequently find themselves at odds with each other even as they’re working toward the same goal, and their constant bickering and subsequent making up felt incredibly life-like (I have a brother, ask me how I know) without detracting from the overall tone of the book. They both make mistakes, get on each other’s nerves, but then find a way to focus and push it aside when serious matters occur, and this relationship does just as much to establish the reality of Gilman’s unreal world as all the careful worldbuilding around them. Even as they occasionally frustrated me, I found myself rooting for the Harkers to succeed against the multitude of forces arrayed against them, which is the sign of excellent character development.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the fact that even though the events in Uncanny Vows take place over a century ago, many of the underlying subthemes are just as relevant today as they were back then. Issues of women’s rights, toxic masculinity, class warfare, and hierarchical group struggles are presented in ways that are both topically relevant in terms of the book’s setting, as well as immediately relevant in our modern world, and, more importantly, in a way that naturally fits the story. It’s always a difficult line to walk when dealing with potentially subversive topics, but Gilman absolutely nails it.

Overall, I feel like Uncanny Vows is one of those perfect books to read as the darker months set in (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). The shadows grow longer, the world seems a little less hospitable, but there’s always someone out there fighting to bring some light into areas that desperately need it, and in this case, it’s the Harkers (and best-boy Bother). We may not be able to solve all the mysteries out there, but a lot of times, solving a nearby problem is enough.

Read if: you’re looking for something else to scratch the itch Disco Elysium did; you want some of that old-fashioned eldritch horror without the old-timey racism; you’d pet the dog even if he is part hellhound.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Kluwe grew up in Southern California among a colony of wild chinchillas and didn’t learn how to communicate outside of barking and howling until he was fourteen years old. He has played football in the NFL, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and lies occasionally. He is also the eternal disappointment of his mother, who just can’t understand why he hasn’t cured cancer yet. Do you know why these bio things are in third person? I have no idea. Please tell me if you figure it out.

Author Spotlight: D. Thomas Minton

Laurel Amberdine | 698 words

How did “Carbon Zero” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

Sometimes I like to work from story prompts, and “Carbon Zero” has its generation in a story prompt for a small-press anthology that wanted science fiction stories about law enforcement. For a while I had also been wanting to write a story about climate change, but I hadn’t been able to find a compelling story idea. As a biologist who is constantly confronted with the realities of the changing climate in my work, it was important to me that my story not sugar-coat the trajectory humanity is on. Both of these things came together a few years ago, after British Columbia (where I live) experienced one of the worst climate-driven forest-fire seasons in its history. If we are to have any chance at averting a climate disaster, we must do more than just reduce our carbon output—we need to get to carbon zero or better. “Carbon Zero” explores the human cost of what may become humanity’s last chance to avert its own downfall. (As for that anthology prompt, “Carbon Zero” ended up being too long to submit to the anthology, but I guess that worked out in all of our favor).

Did you get stuck at any point while writing this?

Surprisingly, this one came very fast after I settled on the basic idea and had the main character and his conflict sorted out, which also happened quickly. This doesn’t happen often, so it’s notable when it does. I wrote the first draft of “Carbon Zero” in about an hour. I then did some additional research to nail down the details, and I had the final story completed within a few days of when I started to brainstorm ideas.

Where are you in this story?

What an intriguing question, and not one I have often thought about. Some of my stories are very personal, and I think it’s obvious (to me at least), where I am in the story, whether it’s within a particular character, belief structure, conflict, or story idea. Not so for “Carbon Zero.” This one draws mainly from my experience as someone whose professional work has been directly impacted by climate change, rather than from any specific personal experience (although those happen every day, too). Those professional experiences, and to some extent the urgency I feel for us to get our act together and change something, are likely where I lie in this story.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I find I don’t have much time to read for pleasure. Between my day job, my writing, and just life in general, I can only manage to squeeze in a few short stories here and there. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a lengthy novel. I read a considerable amount of scientific literature for my job, so I’m often a little burned out on reading much of anything after that. When I do read fiction, I read a lot of stories from new writers trying to make that first sale, and believe it or not, I enjoy providing them with feedback (not that I claim any special knowledge) and learning about the craft from them. When I do read published fiction, I tend to dabble in magazines like Lightspeed and Apex for science fiction tales with visceral human stories at their core.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I have several writing projects underway. A few new short stories will be coming out over the next year in a variety of magazines and anthologies. The fifth book in the Calypto Cycle, my 1920 alternate-history, science-fiction thriller series, should also be available soon, but the first four books can be found at most online booksellers. I’m almost finished with the manuscript for the sixth entry in that series. Toss in a half-dozen short stories at various stages of development/submission, and I often find myself wishing for more hours in the day.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Carlie St. George

Laurel Amberdine | 594 words

How did “We’ll Never Die in the Woods” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

“Diamonds & Toads” was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was young. I think I just liked the visual of roses and snakes falling out of people’s mouths. (Still do, TBH.) When I reread it as an adult, though, I was struck by how sorry I felt for the oldest daughter. Sure, she’s a jerk, but she also A) gets cursed to spit out toads and vipers every time she talks, B) gets kicked out of her home, and C) dies all alone in some dark corner of the woods—and all because she’s rude one time when she gives this (supposed) rich lady some water? Hell, she doesn’t even refuse the request! She just isn’t polite about it. I’m not above feasting on some just desserts, but this feels like an overreaction.

Combine that with an abused, vulnerable girl who marries the very first person who’s kind to her, and a dude who supposedly falls in love with this total stranger who just happens to be an endless source of wealth? Yeah. It didn’t take long for the fix-it fic to bloom within me.

What is your writing process like? Did this story fit the pattern?

If we can define my writing process as “writes at three a.m. when only the bats are still awake and constantly muttering, ‘Curses! The word count has exploded again!’” Then sure, this pretty much fits the pattern.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

I mean. It’s a silly thing. But I felt strongly that the younger, sweeter sister should also be the one who swears more.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

Lately, I’ve been bouncing between queer horror (Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle, Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White) and Japanese mysteries (Don’t Call It Mystery by Yumi Tamura, The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo).

As far as writers who inspire me . . . so many short fiction writers, honestly. Isabel J. Kim has published an incredible amount of fantastic work over the last two years. Dominique Dickey’s “Who The Final Girl Becomes” is a wonderful exploration of identity and trauma. Easily one of my favorite stories I’ve read in 2023. And Suzan Palumbo has yet to write a story that I didn’t absolutely love. I’m really looking forward to reading her debut collection Skin Thief. (Hopefully, I’ll have already done so by the time this interview comes out!)

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

Lately, I’ve been splitting my time between writing ghost stories, fanfic, and a weird little novel about road trips and corpse art. My story “15 Eulogies Scribbled Inside a Hello Kitty Notebook” was recently reprinted in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2022. You can also find it in my collection You Fed Us to the Roses, published by Robot Dinosaur Press. And a full list of my published and upcoming works is available here on my blog.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Izzy Wasserstein

Laurel Amberdine | 401 words

How did “To the Waters and the Wild” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

This story originated with a Twitter thread. I don’t recall now who wrote it, unfortunately, but the author argued that the idea of sirens as seductresses was a later invention, and what the sirens’ song originally offered was knowledge.

I wondered what it would be like to have strange men continually throwing themselves in the ocean to get at you when all you wanted was to sing with your siren siblings. That’s where this story was born.

Where are you in this story?

I’d like to say I’m one of the sirens, but I think I’m the sailor—wanting to reject the hetero- and cisnormative assumptions of my society, wanting to cultivate spaces of mutual support, places where hierarchies of power and possession are rejected in favor of community, but also knowing I’ve got work to do to get there.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

I often borrow titles from works I admire. This one comes from W.B. Yeats’s (my problematic fave) poem “The Stolen Child.” It’s not the first time I’ve worked lines from Yeats into one of my stories, and I suspect it won’t be the last.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

If you’re a writer reading this, you’re probably invested in speculative fiction. I suspect you share with me the sense that our world could be—and should be—much better than it is! I believe fiction can make space for imagining better worlds and how we might get to them. And I believe your work—yes, you, personally—matters. No one but you can write the stories you need to tell, so I hope you write them!

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

Most of my writing time is devoted to my novel-in-progress, a queer science fantasy space opera filled with terrors, feelings, and intrigue. My debut novella, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart, a queer noir technothriller murder mystery is coming out in March 2024 with Tachyon. (Pre-orders available now!)

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: A.T. Greenblatt

Laurel Amberdine | 440 words

How did “Mindfulness and the Machine” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

I told myself that I wouldn’t be one of those writers who would move to NYC and then write a short story about moving to NYC. I’ve read too many of those over the years and they start to be repetitive. But then, I discovered I wanted to use all the newness I was experiencing in a story somehow: the constant motion of living in a city with eight million people, the feeling of jumping into a deep, strong current after spending the pandemic’s lockdown in the stillness of the suburbs. I didn’t want to write a NYC story, so I wrote this instead.

Did you get stuck at any point while writing this? How did you get past that?

I was constantly stuck throughout writing this story. I wasn’t in the headspace to be creative in the summer I wrote and revised this. I talked about that struggle and what caused it in this essay I wrote for Uncanny. There wasn’t a moment where the story became unstuck either. I got through it by sitting down night after night for weeks and tweaking a few sentences and maybe adding a few more. The only reason why I didn’t put the story away and try again in a few months was because I kept thinking about it and knew I had to get it out of my head.

What led you into writing genre fiction?

In the past, I would have given this complex answer about imagination and the freedom to create things that don’t and can’t exist in the here and now. But honestly, I’m just a wonder junkie. I love the feeling of wonder I get from good SFF and love having the ability to create that magic for others.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I’ve been reading lots of short stories published this year (I’m trying to catch up), as well as new novels and novellas in SFFH. I’m more scattershot with audiobooks though. Right now, I’m listening to a cozy mystery and just finished a historical fiction novel and before that, it was an autobiography.

Inspiration is a shy thing, I think. I find by casting a wide net in what I consume and by paying attention to the world around me, inspiration will find me just fine.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 229 words

Coming up in January, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Benjamin Peek (“Shadow Films”) and David Anaxagoras (“We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World”). We also have a flash story (“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus”) from Rachael K. Jones, and another (“Night Desk Duty at the Infinite Paradox Hotel”) from Aimee Ogden.

Plus, we have original fantasy by Sloane Leong (“A Saint Between the Teeth”) and Adam-Troy Castro (“Farewell to Faust”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “In the Tree’s Hollow, a Doe” by Lowry Poletti and “To Be a Happy Man” from Thomas Ha.

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy a book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

• • • •

Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got a veritable plethora of stories forthcoming. We’ve got work from the following authors coming up over the next couple of issues: P H Lee, Everdeen Mason, Alex Irvine, Sharang Biswas, and Marissa Lingen. So be sure to keep an eye out for all that SFnal goodness in the months to come. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed.

Thanks for reading!

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Destroy Projects

www.destroysf.com

Newsletter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/rss-2

Podcast Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss

Twitter

www.twitter.com/LightspeedMag

Bluesky

bsky.app/profile/lightspeedmagazine.com

Facebook

www.facebook.com/LightspeedMagazine

Subscribe

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe

Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes more than 100 stories (about 700,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain!

Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe for more information, including about third-party subscription options.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so.

Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

The Editors

We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version

If you enjoy Lightspeed and/or Nightmare, our Patreon page is a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon?

There are no big companies supporting or funding our magazines, so they really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising.

While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed).

Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one account.

Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy the work Adamant Press puts out, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Patreon is the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Patron?

Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon, you help fund our growth and continued publication of three award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally.

By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You!

If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon. That URL again is patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams.

Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and our other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Senior Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Editor

Arley Sorg

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Interns

Mayookh Barua

Madison Brake

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

Chris Kluwe

Aigner Loren Wilson

Copy Editor

Luke Tolvaj

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Associate Publisher

Christie Yant

Reprint Editor (Emeritus)

Rich Horton

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading our Adamant Press magazines, you might also enjoy these works edited by our publisher John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 (with N.K. Jemisin)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 (with Carmen Maria Machado)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 (with Diana Gabaldon)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 (with Veronica Roth)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 (with Rebecca Roanhorse)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 (with R.F. Kuang)

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: Burn the Ashes (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: Or Else the Light (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

Epic: Legends of Fantasy

The Far Reaches

Federations

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Out There Screaming (with Jordan Peele)

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

A People’s Future of the United States (with Victor LaValle)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse

The Way of the Wizard

What the #@&% is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Wool by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

The Silo Saga Omnibus by Hugh Howey

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

Sand by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Reentry by Peter Cawdron

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker

The Blind King’s Wrath by Ashok K. Banker

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

Poster Girl by Veronica Roth

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

The Undertakers by Nicole Glover

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.