TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 169 (June 2024)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: June 2024

SCIENCE FICTION

The Waking Sleep of a Seething Wound
dave ring

Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance
Andrea Kriz

The Help Hotline
Dominica Phetteplace

Warning Notes from an Annihilator Machine
Oyedotun Damilola Muees

FANTASY

Sparrow and the Parasol
Varsha Dinesh

An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe
Megan Chee

In the Hands of the Mountain God
Deborah L. Davitt

The Weight of Salt
Shanna Germain

EXCERPTS

Androne
Dwain Worrell

NONFICTION

Book Review: We Mostly Come Out at Night edited by Rob Costello
Arley Sorg

Book Review: Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
Aigner Loren Wilson

Book Review: Road to Ruin by Hana Lee
Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Varsha Dinesh

Andrea Kriz

Deborah L. Davitt

Oyedotun Damilola Muees

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, July 2024

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

© 2024 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Grandeduc / Adobe Stock Images

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

Editorial: June 2024

John Joseph Adams | 186 words

Welcome to issue 169 of Lightspeed Magazine!

Both of our SF short stories explore the realm of the robotic. Andrea Kriz starts us off with “Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance,” a novelette about a young mecha pilot in a soul-crushing society. Oyedotun Damilola Muees brings us a killing machine with a conscience in his new epistolary story “Warning Notes from an Annihilator Machine.” We also have two terrific flash pieces: “The Waking Sleep of a Seething Wound” from dave ring and “The Help Hotline” by Dominica Phetteplace.

Our fantasy shorts both wrestle with the gods and fate. Varsha Dinesh spins a tale of gods, magic, and body modification in “Sparrow and the Parasol.” In Deborah L. Davitt’s new “In the Hands of the Mountain God,” an icy pilgrimage turns into something more complicated. Megan Chee has a flash story, “An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe,” as does Shanna Germain (“The Weight of Salt”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team.

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.

The Waking Sleep of a Seething Wound

dave ring | 1518 words

Dawn shot a quiver of cirrus that smeared like sunscreen across the sky. Bini had been awake for hours, back aching. She was too old for this shit. Mox still slept like the dead, her snores a regular wheeze.

Hard to imagine Bini had once slept beside that noise every night.

She should wake Mox up, but there didn’t seem any harm in pushing the snooze button a little while longer. Until movement finally flickered through the streaked bay windows below them. Bini peered through the rifle’s scope to find the farmer putting the kettle on. It took all Bini’s grit not to pull the trigger.

Bini nudged Mox and gently covered her mouth when the other woman would have scolded her. “He’s up.”

Professionalism replaced annoyance. “Slide over.”

Bini moved aside without protest. Mox was by far the better shot. And letting her look into the scope for a hard thirty seconds gave Bini a chance to consider the pale brown band of skin on Mox’s finger.

“We good?” Mox asked.

“We’re good.”

“Aight. I’ll be on channel five.”

Bini signaled an affirmative and began her descent.

• • • •

Every operative in the cabal had a rating handwritten in the top left corner of the first page in their file, opposite the shitty passport photo they took during orientation. The rating stood for their aptitude at interacting with SAPPhO, the subatomic particle phase order. Operatives just called it the void. The first part of the rating was a number between 0 and 100. The second part was a letter.

The number indicated how well the operative could enter the void. The letter indicated how well they manipulated it. Mox’s SAPPhO was 45A. Bini’s was 99C. No one else had a number rating over an 84. Most people could only dip into the void for as long as they could hold their breath underwater. Bini’s record was a half hour. Normally the cabal didn’t let you into the field without at least a B cert, but it was hard to argue with that 99. Sometimes you needed a poorly aimed bazooka more than a sharpshooter.

Weirdly enough, all of the cabal’s voidwalkers were women. Not everyone was a lesbian, but enough were that the acronym felt like one more example of the corporatization of Pride. They also weren’t all cis—confirmed when Mox was cleared for the spinal augmentation procedure—though Bini had been disappointed when she realized there were no nonbinary operatives. It made her doubt the part of herself that had always felt uneasy with womanhood. “I’m barely a girl,” she used to say, and feminine honorifics still made her skin crawl. But it was hard to argue with a gender-linked capacity to slide into the space between atoms the way blood slides into the gaps between floorboards.

• • • •

Some jobs were like killing deer with a chainsaw, or shucking corn with a mallet. This was one of them. Two of the farmer’s knuckles were on the floor and Bini already had blood coagulating in her eyelashes, but the dumb fuck still wasn’t saying shit. Maybe she was losing her touch.

Harvey on the dials plus Mox in her ear and things felt like old times. Bini was listening yeah but really she was thinking about that night they fought at the mall food court. Before the first split, before they opened things up. Back when it was just them. When Mox had the nerve, in the middle of those cheese steaks, to tell Bini she “never really let her in.”

By the time Bini skinned her knee on the fountain in the middle of the mall, she realized the whole thing between her and Mox was fucked. Mox needed someone to make her feel needed. But Bini had spent her whole life learning how to be enough. All by herself.

Now it was fifteen years since they’d done a job together. Getting pulled in for this one felt like the best parts of being married, without all the noise.

• • • •

For the seven years they were together, Mox tried to fix their marriage with counseling, crystals, and a short stint as a very uneven polyamorous trio. That moment of clarity underneath the mall’s fluorescent lighting didn’t matter, because Bini kept it to herself. She never found a way to share it in a way that wouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Still, she learned a lot about herself during those years—about communication and trauma and being ace—and as soon as the cabal got big enough to have a second division, Mox pulled the plug and moved to Phoenix. It was the right thing to do, but when Bini told her that, the logic of it made Mox shut down.

Eventually, they’d been apart almost twice as long as they’d been together. Mox’s new wife Freddie was a bassist in a goth cover band and nothing made Bini more green with envy than seeing the videos Mox took standing at the foot of the stage at Freddie’s shows.

Once, late at night, Bini must have watched one of those videos more than a hundred times, entranced by the friction of fret and string alongside the snatch of Freddie’s background vocals, Mox singing along from behind the camera. The next day she had dozens of notifications. Bini’s fingers must have dragged across the keyboard, posting a string of kjnsddjjkjsdnkj beneath the video. Same girl, same, said the first comment, while a drool emoji marked the second and the third.

And as Bini frantically tried to figure out how to delete her post, a little white box appeared on her screen. Mox had clicked the heart button beside her comment. Bini couldn’t bear to delete it, that shred of connection a wispy dandelion seed floating across the vast emptiness of the internet.

• • • •

“That almost worked,” Bini told Mox on the comm. “It was almost normal. I guess I shouldn’t have been afraid that—”

“You wanna know what your fucking problem is?”

Bini grunted. She wasn’t falling for that.

“I’ll tell you what your fucking problem is.”

Bini knew Mox was punctuating each word with a nail-bitten finger. Harvey coughed on the line but Mox didn’t acknowledge him. “There’s no such thing as normal. And if there was, I don’t want us to be almost normal. I want you to be a seething wound, because that’s what you are.”

“I’m gonna get off this channel,” Harvey said. “Good work, Bini. Nice having you on the team again.”

Mox and Bini breathed back and forth at each other until Mox caved first. “Well shit. Look what you went and did. Now Harvey is gonna be on my ass about bringing you back.”

Bini sniffed. “I have boots more emotionally secure than that boy.”

“You’re not wrong.” Mox laughed. “But that boy is in his late thirties now, old girl.”

Bini almost didn’t mind being called a girl when the word was in Mox’s mouth. But she grimaced in disbelief. “No way. I remember his first job, when he pissed—”

“That’s what I’m saying, Bini. That was seventeen years ago. Since then we’ve—oh.” Something crunched in Bini’s ear, like an egg breaking on the sidewalk. Mox’s voice dropped twenty decibels. “We’ve been made. Sniper, half in the void. Fourteenth floor, against the glare. I’ll hang a thread.”

“Mox?”

But she was gone.

• • • •

For Bini, the void had always been a hot butch at the bottom of a precipice looking up like she was gonna walk all over her. But there were no rewards for her id today. Hearing that silence, knowing that Mox was dead, dropped Bini right in. She skated through walls on fractal waves and didn’t even register the horizon shift when her feet rocked Bini perpendicular up the building opposite Mox’s blind.

Even when the sniper was dealt with, the orbital surface of her skull crumpled in Bini’s hands like a used tissue, Bini stayed in the void. She found the thread Mox had hung on the bullet, and used it to zipline between the two skyscrapers, flinging herself towards this incipient grief, hate building in her like a fire. Bini hated that sniper, she hated whoever set up the farmer, she hated the idea of having to tell Freddie to her face what had happened. Bini hated seeing Harvey like this—he’d already made it back to the blind, salt making tracks down his cheeks.

She’d hold him in a second. When she was ready.

When you die in the void, you leave behind a thin, hollow echo. A sketch. The echo of a person wasn’t much. It’s a neon mirage with a vicious half-life. Mox’s was on the ground, still wide-eyed and annoyed at being offed, eyebrows raising and lowering like a gif.

Bini laid down beside Mox’s staticky outline, even though she might as well have been holding psychic sandpaper. The prickly silence between them made things almost like it used to be. Just one more minute, she told herself.

Just one more minute.

©2024 by dave ring.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

dave ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Hidden Ones (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and numerous short stories. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, and the co-editor of Baffling Magazine. Find him online at dave-ring.com or @slickhop on Twitter.

Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance

Andrea Kriz | 9308 words

Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded terrain control—but as soon as Bliss Academy shifted directions, pinging every cadet on board their new target, he reached around to the back of his neck and switched on his synchro-gear. Immediately his cradle of cushions, along with all bodily sensations, disappeared into a void.

“I fight for the Republic,” he said. “For Which We Stand.”

He’d said the same pledge at roll call every morning when he’d lived in the dorms. At the beginning of classes too, when he’d still had to attend class. The glory of the Republic, he’d learned, would impose his will over this liminal realm too. The pure force of repetition did, at least. The void transformed into an ocean. He imagined the comforting embrace of his epigenesis core. Treading water. Holding his breath.

He dove.

Clanging rose up to meet him first. Udo opened his eyes—his ARMOR’s sensors, rather—to the sight of the hanger. First-year cadets crashed around the practice track along its rim, struggling to control the titanic strides of their ARMOR units. Even more so as Bliss Academy stumbled over a particularly hilly section of terrain. Udo swung in his cubicle. As the mesh over his unit’s deployment hatch clattered aside, he could see they were making good time across the bombed-out wastes that separated the Republic from the Free States. Here on the border, any stationary settlement, or even any roving city without anti-air defenses, would wind up reduced to the same.

From here, he had a good view of the hexapod campus police units scurrying along the underside of the Academy too. One attached to the nearest loading dock with two arms, using the other four to secure a shipping container emblazoned with the stars of the Free States: winnings from the Academy Udo had just vanquished. Udo winced inwardly as the first person staggered out. Surrogates. He’d never understood why they couldn’t just be brought up on transports. There were too many, he supposed. Some in the skirts and work clothes of civilians, others in cadet uniforms, trailing bloody wires—freshly extracted from their ARMORs. As new citizens of the Republic, they’d give birth to future pilots, as well as epigenesis cores . . .

Udo.

Udo faltered—but he maintained control of his ARMOR as it dropped on its cable tether down to the sands of the wastes. A figure leaned over the surface of his consciousness, calling his name. Udo ignored it. At the speed Bliss Academy was moving, he’d have a few minutes of practice before needing to be drawn up again. He erupted a mane of spikes all the way down his exoskeleton. If he kept his opponent at a distance with his needle projectiles, she would fall like all the others. He leaped, spinning into a double tornado combo. Then a triple. Of course, if he could figure out how to bring out the true power of his epigenesis core, his Aias Field, no Free States ARMOR unit would be able to even touch him—

Udo, please. Desynch.

Udo flubbed his fifth tornado, sending the spikes pinging off one of the massive legs of Bliss Academy. Someone was shaking his real body now. He gritted his teeth and let himself desynch, kicking up to the ocean surface of the void. His unit slumped. Udo lifted his arm—aching for, instead of his frail fingers, his ARMOR’s claws—and switched off his synchro-gear.

“Udo. How many times have you dived today?”

Captain Laurent leaned over him. He was Udo’s superior officer—and the scars branching across his scalp, from the remains of a synchro-gear, marked him as a former ARMOR pilot as well. Why ask, Udo wondered? He already knew.

“I need to practice.”

“Then eat something. You need to eat something.”

Udo stared wearily at the plate Laurent offered him. A tomato, its slices dripping with juices all the hydroponics tech of the Republic hadn’t even come close to replicating. A luxurious cut of his winnings usually only reserved for the general staff in their bunker deep below. The thought of someone in the Free States crawling in the dirt to grow this, only to have it plucked away by an ARMOR match loss made Udo’s stomach turn.

“After I finish my drill,” Udo mumbled.

“Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”

“I’ll eat whatever. There are shortages, right?”

“Not for you.”

Udo took a deep breath and switched on his synchro-gear again. He felt a nosebleed starting up. Two synchs back-to-back was a lot even for him. But he had to suck it up. He’d messed up his last combo chain, so he had to get at least twenty needle tornadoes in a row, then deploy down to the wastes with his sparring partner to run through a realistic battle scenario before ending his practice session for the night.

“Udo—you saw who your next opponent is, right?” Laurent’s voice floated in his ear.

“Yes.”

Udo dove, not seeing Laurent shimmering above, refusing to hear his voice. After four years as the top-ranked cadet of Bliss Academy, Udo could understand Laurent’s concerns about his physical well-being. But he could not comprehend more than that. He could not.

• • • •

Your Aias Field will arise when you least expect it, Laurent had always told Udo. Connections to epigenesis cores couldn’t be forced. So it helped to talk to it. Like you’d talk to a child, Laurent always said. She’s not fully conscious as core, but she can understand emotions. So Udo admitted to his core that everyone was watching to see if he could continue his unbroken win streak. That Bliss Academy’s general staff had put up more resources than ever on this victory, shipping containers of fuel and synth-meat, and even first-year cadets prepared to be traded in the unlikely event of his loss. And then, as the sun dipped over his third sparring match down on the wastes, Udo felt it. A certain weight. A gaze on the back of his neck. His heart pounded, his fists slicked with sweat, before he synched completely and totally with his ARMOR again. His sparring partner’s unit staggered to its feet. Udo skewered it with needles in his most fluid tornado combo of the night. Four rotations. Hitting joints between the exoskeleton plates. The neck. Back of the knees. His opponent collapsed. Did you see that? Udo thought in a rush of adrenaline. Are you proud of me?

Only a husky laugh responded.

When he desynched, his ARMOR lounge was empty. As usual.

Udo needed to sleep. Dried blood caked his lip. If he’d really pushed himself to the point of hallucination, he could suffer a blackout or worse. He needed to tell Laurent. Run a diagnostic for his synchro-gear. Instead, he slipped outside to his private elevator. Down, to the marble corridors carved with the names of the fallen, down behind the kitchens, down in the clattering filth of a cargo lift to where he knew his fellow cadets would be. He billowed out onto a dock jutting into open air. The wastes rumbled past, only the sight of Udo’s ARMOR unit slowly being drawn back up to its hanger by its cable indicating its vast distance below. This dock was the closest cadets could physically get to the ARMOR hanger—and therefore the most realistic simulation of conditions as they’d be on match day.

“What’re you doing here, Top Rank?” a sneer greeted him.

At the sight of Udo’s gold-trimmed uniform, the first-years leaped to their feet. The older cadets remained synched. Engrossed in practice. Ready, the second he lost a match, to dethrone him. They’d take his ARMOR unit’s custom exoskeleton, his lounge, his position as the spearhead of Bliss’s formation without a second thought. How could he have even considered coming down here? But he couldn’t leave. A certain weight crouched atop his synchro-gear, on the back of his neck.

“What do you know about the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance?” Udo asked them.

Four years of stony silence crashed against him. The unbeatable Udo Gehler had ascended the rankings fresh out of high school, within months of entering Bliss Academy. From the cushioned comfort of his personal ARMOR lounge, he’d never endured any privations. Never become close enough to any of them to suffer the disappearance of fallen friends.

“She’s a reaper,” a quiet voice finally answered. “Everyone she engages in direct combat with goes on their last dive. During the match or right after . . .”

She trailed off as the other cadets abruptly moved away from her. As if she might be contagious. She nursed a cup of what shone like diluted ARMOR lymph.

“Quiet,” her friend hissed, elbowing her. “Finish that. All your troubles ‘down there’ will be done for.”

“Why are you drinking that?” Udo demanded. “What ‘troubles’?”

The silence grew. The first-years stared at him, eyes wide. Udo didn’t know what the big deal was. If this cadet hadn’t wanted to become a surrogate, she simply shouldn’t have become pregnant. It was basic biology. They’d all been taught that in their classes. If she did, that meant that deep down she wanted to sacrifice herself for the Republic: her body in the birth of a cadet who’d take her place in the fight against the horde of the Free States, her soul to live on and protect as an epigenesis core . . .

“Who do you think she is?” she countered. “The Virgin Bitch of the Resistance.”

“An enemy of the Republic,” Udo said without hesitation. “A terrorist created by The Free States to destroy our generation of ARMOR pilots and cripple our proud military . . .”

“Why do you keep talking like that?” another cadet snickered.

“Like what?”

“Our proud military,” he mimicked. All of them were laughing now.

“It’s all in the name, isn’t it?” the lymph-drinking cadet said. She set down her cup and drew dangerously close. “She’s making herself out to be some kind of Joan of Arc figure.”

“He doesn’t know who that is. Poor kid’s been synched since he came out of the womb.”

“Just because I was excused from classes doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” Udo retorted.

“Then you’ll know she used to be a surrogate. Just a few years ago. She’s our age. A refugee the Republic picked up off the wastes and gave everything. But when she turned eighteen, she couldn’t do her duty. She ran off to the Free States instead.”

“She’s a good pilot,” one of the other fourth-years said, desynching. He unwrapped a protein cube and bit into it with relish. “I’ll give her that. She’ll make a good little epigenesis core when she’s recaptured. I hope I’m on the team that gets to implant her. You should see it, Udo, it’s always so satisfying when despite all the lies they tell themselves, their egg fertilizes and the baby grows. It always happens no matter how they try to resist. It’s what their bodies really want, after all . . .”

Funny, Udo thought, that this cadet should talk of her like that, with heme flavoring dripping down his chin. Refugee and Free State blood ran through most of them. Only here, the sacrifice of the surrogates made them full citizens of the Republic and effaced everything else they were.

“But who is she?” Udo insisted.

“A distraction.”

Udo felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder. The other cadets fell silent, the ones in Udo’s squad straightening into attention. Laurent had caught up with him.

“Don’t waste time thinking of her or her twisted goals.”

Back in the lounge, Udo promised to get some sleep, then, after Laurent left, tried synching again. But his day’s wanderings had done him no good. He floated for long minutes in the void, mouthing his pledge. The Republic For Which We Stand. The Republic For Which. We Stand. But the cadence was all wrong. All of a sudden, he couldn’t remember the way he’d said it, every morning, every class, every synch session of his life. Instead, a sensation crawled over the back of his neck. The sensation of, he didn’t know where—but somewhere else. The crowded laughter of a mess hall, corn husks strewn over a packed dirt floor. Lips curled into a pledge. We the People of the Free States. We the People.

“Who is this?”

“It’s your conscience, Udo Gehler. I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

Udo turned. But all of a sudden, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel the ocean of the void anymore. Only a cold shore beneath him.

“Is this your first time hearing someone else in here? With you?”

“Here?”

With revulsion, he felt. Someone. Eye to eye—no, so close their eyeballs nearly touched. He recoiled. But they lunged forward.

“Stop. Don’t come any closer. Get away from me!”

Fingers curled around his throat without regard to his voice. He had a defense just for this. Didn’t he? The one who’d birthed him, who’d given her life to live on as his epigenesis core. She’d be watching over him. She would preserve this sacrosanct barrier between his innermost being and this presence. He cried out with the most animal of desires, to be defended, to be held—

Silence.

“Aw, trying to reach your epigenesis core? Trying to call mommy to protect you?”

Ten pinpricks of sharpness dug into his neck. He fell backwards into waves. He was sinking. He was sinking under that throbbing weight.

“Where’s your Aias Field? Where’s mommy? Where is she?”

The void turned to a hard table his body screamed against. Don’t give her anything. It’s not good for the baby. He almost remembered who he was in the ebbs, before the pain hit again, before his sobs disintegrated into animal shrieks. Stubborn bitch, isn’t she? We’ll be here all night if she keeps this up. His fingers clawed bloody rivulets against stainless steel, skin, against anything save for the agony between his legs that he longed to tear free, into pieces. Keep pushing, sweetie. All this, you’ll see, it’s helping form your maternal bond . . .

“Don’t feel bad, Udo,” the voice whispered in his ear. “The Republic’s epigenesis cores have been barren for a long time now. Go beyond Academy territory, and you’ll see. Men and boys just like you, crying. Crying out . . .”

Captain Laurent, Udo pleaded. Help me.

“Laurent? Captain Theo Laurent? Still a captain after all these years. Heh. In fact, the last time an Aias Field appeared was on the battlefield . . . the last time your Captain fought.”

The voice whispered in his ear, revelation after revelation, then drew away.

“Go, go to your captain. Ask him about Vologes. Ask him about everything.”

• • • •

“I’m a new bioengineering cadet. I’ve been sent down here to observe.”

Early the next morning, Udo stood in the suffocating heart of Bliss Academy. The rumble of its movement was almost imperceptible this deep within its interior. Instead of windows, walls of machinery breathed humidity over him. That gave him an excuse for sweating at least. He wasn’t sure if his lie would work, even with the uniform he’d swiped from the laundry. But he’d once had a roommate, the few months as a first year he’d been housed in the dorms. A bio major who’d been picked up from the wastes after the destruction of his original Academy by the Free States. Udo tried to summon even an ounce of that roommate’s expressionless demeanor.

“You’re late,” the instructor barked, gesturing at Udo to join the cluster of cadets behind him. He’d grown a mustache, but he was obviously a new graduate. “Disinfect your hands and put on your scrubs. Surrogates wait for no one.”

Despite that lecture, the instructor stopped to joke with the two campus police patrolling the corridor, taking a swig from one of their flasks. But even after girding himself like that, the room he led the cadets into was decently sized. Clean. Well-lit with bulbs that glowed more softly than the harsh desert sun. Udo felt himself relax. The instructor leaned over the only piece of furniture—a bed, bolted to the floor—pushing aside the forest of wires twining up from it to the ceiling. Udo tried to figure out the age of the person beneath the sheets. But his eyes kept wandering to the bulge of their belly.

“I can feel it,” a voice floated out of the machinery. “It’s kicking me.”

“That’s right. That’s your baby.”

“It’s inside me. It’s inside—”

Suddenly the surrogate was shrieking, struggling to a sitting position, throwing up. Immediately, the door slammed open and the two campus police rushed in. The last thing Udo saw as the instructor herded them out was the surrogate’s teeth sinking into one of their hands.

“They’ve been taught all sorts of things in the Free States,” the instructor explained once they’d gotten almost out of hearing distance, feeling around his white coat. “It gets better in the third trimester or so. They start forming their maternal bond . . . usually . . .”

“Who’s the father?” one of the cadets asked.

“Asking the important questions, eh?” The instructor retrieved a pill from his pocket, pointing finger guns at the cadet who’d spoken. “It’s a perk of the job, you could say. We have to give most of them to the ARMOR pilots, of course, but there’s always a certain kind they don’t want. For those, we like to have as many cadets try as possible to guarantee a successful pregnancy . . . Oh, Captain? To what do we owe the honor?”

Udo almost welcomed the hand on his shoulder. He was shivering as Laurent hurried him to the nearest elevator, with a cold that only settled into his bones as they began clanking painfully, slowly, upward. Or maybe it was lengthening silence. There had always been this silence between them, Udo realized now. Comforting as long as their words stayed within the confines of matches, ARMOR strategies, casualties, resources won. He could retreat into it like he always had. He could have, if it hadn’t been for that weight on the back of his neck.

“Udo,” Laurent finally said. “Why did you come down here?”

“I wanted to learn more about epigenesis cores.”

“I know you’ve been having issues bringing out your Aias Field,” Laurent sighed. “It’s perfectly normal at your age. But you’ve maintained top rank magnificently without it. You won’t need it to win this match either. After you graduate, when you’re on the battlefield proper, I have no doubt you’ll figure it out.”

Conversations weren’t all that different from ARMOR matches, Udo thought. You had to maintain control over their pace and movement. And you had to end them as quickly as possible.

“I just want to know. Was mine a cadet from the Republic? Or a captured surrogate.”

“It doesn’t matter. She volunteered.”

“Before or after the fact?”

“It doesn’t matter who those people thought they were before the Republic took them in,” Laurent said. “Once they gave birth, they became mothers. They formed an impregnable, biological bond with their offspring—that bond is your epigenesis core. That’s what separates us from those traitors in the Free States.”

The elevator jolted, flickering its lights. Udo tried another direction of attack:

“Do you remember what it was like? Having an Aias Field?”

“I never got to summon mine,” Laurent said. “The Free States destroyed my epigenesis core before I could. It was a cowardly, heinous attack—”

It’d been a battle a couple years before Udo had been born. Over a swath of border between the Republic and the Free States not governed by the Academy system. Udo knew fighting in those places was desperate. ARMORs attacked opposing roving cities directly, while survivors in makeshift stationary settlements were bombed into oblivion. Even engineers were expected to take up guns to defend their country. Thanks to the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance, Udo knew a lot of things. Like that Laurent’s synchro-gear had been forcibly extracted and fully functional at the time.

“How come you never had another synchro-gear installed?” he asked.

“I was deemed as mentally unsuitable.”

“Because of Vologes?”

Laurent looked down at him then, through the shadow of his peaked cap. Udo had ruptured that silence between them. Maybe it would never come back.

“Les Vologes was a friend. A dear friend. He took his last dive right in front of me.”

“You saw him fall,” Udo continued. “Your epigenesis core had been shattered. You couldn’t move like that. So you desynched and ran to him. You couldn’t believe he was gone. You climbed into his unit. And he was still there. He protected you.”

“It was a freak accident.”

“You formed an Aias Field, the two of you. Right?” Udo took a step toward him. He wasn’t sure why. “If that’s true, then there’s no need to continue like this. We don’t need to do this to the surrogates.”

“You’re young,” Laurent sighed. “You’re saying things you don’t understand. There are many reasons our country broke apart, but it all comes down to one difference: cities full of people that respect their biological roles and cities full of people that don’t. This is not just a war of resources or land, but a war of freedom, a war for the soul of the Republic . . .”

That was news to Udo.

“Epigenesis cores are the culmination of science,” Laurent continued. “They’re a divine gift. An irrefutable confirmation of the sacred nature of the maternal bond. If we desecrate this principle. If we become so desperate for victory we try to force them to form between anyone, we’ll become just like the cities we’re fighting. We’ll let those so-called Free States win.”

“So it’s worth enslaving people just for that . . .”

“Slaves?” Laurent snapped. He grabbed Udo by the shoulders. “Who have you been talking to? Huh? Who taught you that word?”

“I know what a slave is,” Udo said.

“It’s not about things like morals when it comes to the Free States,” Laurent shouted, shaking him. “They want to destroy our way of life. Do you understand that, Udo? They want to destroy us!”

Udo stared. Laurent’s peaked cap had fallen off. Who was this man, breathing heavily at him, pits in the whites of his eyes? Laurent had always protected him. Captain Laurent knew everything.

At least that’s what Udo had thought.

The elevator finally shuddered to a stop at the top level of Bliss Academy and Laurent shifted his grip to Udo’s upper arm, marching him back to the ARMOR lounge. Two other figures joined them. Campus police, Udo saw from the patches on their shoulders before Laurent shoved him inside. The door clicked shut behind him.

“Don’t allow him to leave without my permission,” Laurent said out in the hall. “Remove his elevator access.”

Way of life? Udo wondered, rubbing his bruised arm. What was that? A cushioned space that met his every need, as long as that need was piloting his ARMOR for the glory of the Republic? He crossed over to the window and looked down the sheer drop of the Academy’s outer wall, stained with birdshit. What was there left to destroy? They could remove his access to whatever they liked. He reached around to the back of his neck and switched on his synchro-gear.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

The silence of the void buoyed him up and down.

“I know you’re here.”

He felt a prickle of fear. Now that he knew what it was like to share this void with someone—how could he bear being left alone again?

“Why do you let people call you that? It’s ridiculous.”

Finally, an answer. That soft, rasping laugh.

“On the contrary. It’s the most beautiful name in the world. Because of the word Resistance. No. The word before it. The ‘The’. The implication that we’re all in this together. The Resistance. Can you feel it, Udo Gehler?”

Udo dove down to his ARMOR. He didn’t know where else to go. Here, on the battleground of the wastes, everything was as it should be. Here his sparring partner, a second-year he’d never met, fell under barrage after barrage of needle tornados. Udo didn’t wait for them to get up before striding over and kicking their sensors until they shattered. It didn’t matter if he broke this other unit. Nothing he did mattered, as long as he did the same to his opponent, as long as he won. As he ground the other ARMOR’s head into a mess beneath his heel, the cable connecting him to the hanger shook him to the bone. Bliss Academy halted above them, driving its leg anchors into the ground. Across the craters dotting the distance, the opposing Academy came into view. The bit he could see of it, at least. Half its legs dragging uselessly; its tower rusted, despite its freshly-painted stars. Was it really possible? Udo wondered. That she was there?

Udo, Laurent’s voice floated down from the lounge. Desynch for your psych eval.

“I’ll do it later.”

No. You’ll do it now.

Udo kicked back to the surface of the void. Typically, these interviews were formalities, a way for the top-ranked to crack somewhere not in the middle of a pivotal match. But this time, in addition to Laurent and the usual psychologist, the two campus police had come in too.

“We’re worried about you, Udo,” the psychologist began, pulling up Udo’s profile on his screen device. “Captain Laurent has informed me about your recent strange behavior. We’re concerned you may have experienced battlefield trauma—”

“I’m not traumatized. I’m just like this.”

Udo paused. He’d passed this interview dozens of times before. He knew what the right answers were from here on out. I’m just in a high-stress environment. Having the fate of Bliss Academy on my shoulders. By extension, the fate of the Republic. So many lives depend on me winning these matches and ending these battles quickly. I’ve been lashing out. But a weight on the back of his neck, a soft, rasping laugh drowned out anything he might’ve wanted to say.

“Or maybe I’m constantly being traumatized,” he heard himself go on. The psychologist’s finger froze on his screen. “I was born in trauma. I grew up in it. Every day, more trauma happened around me. The adults tried to keep it together. But they couldn’t handle it. During high school, I used to escape through my synchro-gear. To another body, another world. Then instead of virtugames, they put me in an ARMOR. They transferred me to a military Academy. Then instead of escaping—”

The doors to the lounge slid open. A being Udo had only seen from a distance swept in. Her light step drowning out the snap of salutes. A member of the general staff who commanded Bliss Academy from bunkers even deeper within than the epigenesis labs. Three stripes blazed across the shoulder of her uniform. She didn’t have a synchro-gear. Now Udo could see by the lack of marks on the back of her neck that she’d never had one. Of course. The ones who led the Academies came from strongholds far from the battlefield of the border between the Republic and Free States, from behind impenetrable walls.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you, Udo Gehler. At ease.”

“Why are you here, ma’am?” Laurent asked.

“We just want to make sure the match tomorrow goes smoothly.”

“We have it under control.”

“No. You don’t, Captain.” Her medals flashed like bared teeth. “You don’t even have control over your protégé.” She turned back to Udo. “To be frank, we know you’ve been talking to your opponent through your synchro-gear.”

“Through the synchro-gear?” Laurent echoed, his salute faltering.

“Clearly, it was a mistake to put you under the care of one who has perverted the epigenesis system before,” Three Stripes continued, cupping Udo’s face in her hand. “It was a mistake to believe he’d learned anything since then.”

“It’s not his fault,” Udo protested.

But despite himself, he glanced at Laurent. There must’ve been a plea in his eyes, because the campus police surged forward. His captain had gone completely white. He didn’t even struggle as they dragged him outside.

“Stop!” Udo cried. “Where are you taking him?”

“Sit down, Udo.” Three Stripes already had. “We’re not in the Free States. We’re not going to ask you to repress your natural, male urges. Far from it. If you win this match, you can have her. She can be yours and yours alone. You crush her ARMOR, render it unable to move, and in an hour or so we’ll have her extracted and bring her up here—”

“I don’t want that!”

“Of course not.” Three Stripes leaped to her feet, pacing over to the window. “You think you love her. She’s wormed her way into your head.”

Love? Udo thought with revulsion. That’s what they thought this was? They thought that was excuse enough to do something like that?

“She’s like me,” he said.

I can’t love anybody, he wanted to say.

“I can’t love someone like me,” he said.

“Is that so? All the better then.” Three Stripes turned from the window, her medals catching the last beam of afternoon sun. “You just have to win this match like all your previous ones. Then everything will go back as it was. As it should be.”

• • • •

A couple of pills and a dreamless night later, Udo stood on the loading dock, waiting to board his transport. In combat gear, he looked identical to every other ARMOR cadet in his squad. Hexapod units oversaw the preceding vehicle as it dropped down to the wastes and accelerated, disappearing in a cloud of sand. The ARMOR units synched to its occupants launched from the hanger soon after. Academy conventions, agreed upon by both the Republic and Free States, dictated that all cadets had to be deployed to the battlefield during the matches. In exchange, Academies engaged in combat would not be targeted directly by ground or by air. Complying with those rules, Republic cadets stayed safe in these armored transports. Udo’s “disguise” would further protect him from being identified. At least that’s how the general staff had always described the strategy.

“Udo.”

He turned with relief at Laurent’s voice. But his captain wasn’t in uniform. Instead, stubble shadowed his face. His only decorations were a bruise, starting to purple his left eye. Udo stiffened. Even more so when his campus police handlers let Udo stop in front of him, and Laurent suddenly swept him up in a hug.

“I’m—proud of you. Promise me you’ll come back, Udo. Promise me.”

“Why did you?”

Give me a reason, Udo begged silently. His hands frozen at his sides, but twitching at the contact, which reminded him of coming up after long hours of practice. At the faint whiff of sweat, which reminded him of falling asleep on a transport as a child, of being able to sleep because Laurent was sitting beside him. Give me the reason.

“Why didn’t you take your last dive with him? Why did you come back?”

“I realized I still had things to do. I had a duty to my country.”

Udo broke away.

“What do you want me to tell you?” Laurent said, his voice breaking.

“The truth.”

Lift this weight, Udo silently pled.

He waited for a moment. Then he turned away from Laurent and entered the transport. He picked his way past the other members of his squad and tried to make himself comfortable on his cold, randomly-assigned seat. He looked down at the harness securing him. Then he reached around to the back of his neck and turned on his synchro-gear.

• • • •

Wired into her ARMOR, she couldn’t speak. Physically. The filaments surgically threaded through her limbs, making the metal frame an extension of her own nervous system, branched down her throat too. The board of directors that ran the Academies of the Free States refused to install synchro-gears into their cadets, insisting it was too expensive, insisting when pressed that every technological advance of the Republic was morally corrupted by association. Resistance was using the synchro-gear in her brain stem, even so. With this device, ARMOR units could be piloted remotely with the same reaction speed as a physically-wired cadet. Using synchro-gear and wiring together slashed that connection time, giving her a sliver of a millisecond’s edge.

Resistance was huddling on a refugee caravan, just like the one she’d been born on. Allowing herself, at each processing center, to be herded away from the crowd. Replaying her trauma to a rapt immigration officer: I was only sixteen. The Republic told me my body had chosen the baby, that it was ready for the sacrifice. I barely escaped. Resistance was surviving the command of holo-projections who’d never set physical foot on an Academy city, though their billions of dollars of drones often hovered overhead. Telling them: I’m so grateful to be a citizen of the Free States. So grateful for their crumbling living quarters, the food the cadets had to coax out of the soil themselves. So grateful for the fraction of a vote they’d given her—only to be made whole after five years of service, according to law passed by eighty percent of the people of the Free States. Five years which only a percent of her comrades survived. Anything that would get her back into an ARMOR. Anything to get her dropped back onto the front where they’d deemed she belonged.

Everywhere and nowhere at once, a fear, a force of nature.

She felt a familiar rush as the cord tethering her to her hanger disconnected, snapping through the arid, blue sky. The meager contingent of units that had accompanied her had already started burrowing, knowing that if she fell, an ambush was their only chance. The rumble of the approaching enemy reverberated through her ARMOR, sending the keepsakes she’d hung up in her cockpit swinging. Shards of epigenesis cores, each hand-carved with a name. Resistance was hearing every single one of their voices, every single day. Why you and not us? Why’d you survive and not us? Take us with you. We want to see the place you reach, the place where all this ends . . .

“Hello?” a voice floated through the void. “Hello?”

She crouched her ARMOR unit down, letting the sensation of her wires fade, letting the burning sands sink into her palms, letting each of its sensations become her own. Within the cockpit, she could still move just enough. She reached around to the back of her neck and switched on her synchro-gear.

• • • •

“It’s your conscience, Udo Gehler.”

Cresting the lip of a crater, his ARMOR unit flinched. Everyone in his squad noticed. But according to Academy conventions, the match between the opposing top-ranked cadets was theirs alone. Only when one of them triumphed would the fighting proper start.

“I’m here to describe your future death by firing squad.”

A beast erupted out of the sand. Only when it slammed into him did he realize it was an ARMOR—one without an epigenesis core, leaving the sun glaring through the gaping hole in its chest. The pilot was housed in a cockpit beneath its jaws, giving the unit’s head an elongated, muzzle-like appearance. He didn’t even have time to fire his needles.

“It happens a few years after you’ve won this match and graduated from Bliss Academy and shipped out to the front lines proper.”

He staggered. Her weight wasn’t enough to knock him over. The muscles of ARMOR units without cores wasted away, leaving only their skeletal, bioengineered scaffold. Then her hands were at his throat. They felt like hands. Through the tatters of her ARMOR’s exoskeleton, they felt like fingers.

“They say that the epigenesis system saves pilot lives. That mothers will always protect their child so it would be morally indefensible not to use them. But in your first days, you see ARMOR after ARMOR equipped with them fall to forces they have no right to fall to.”

He. Could not. Fall. The memory of Udo’s first ARMOR lessons seared into him. The tons of muscle birthed by the epigenesis core made it difficult, if not impossible, to get back up. He threw himself into a stance on the slope, pulling his arm back. His claws swung only through empty space. She flipped away so lightly that she skidded through the sands when she landed, her cockpit carefully kept almost level with the ground.

“It takes at least six hours to wire someone into an ARMOR, you know.”

She dodged every barrage of needles he fired at her. Bobbing, weaving, loping on all fours. He had a hard time thinking of his opponent in words like unit and pilot. Nothing had prepared him for this. ARMORs weren’t supposed to move like this. They were supposed to attack each other from a distance, strategically, and most of all in silent concentration . . .

“It’s just as strenuous, delicate work to unwire them. The Republic doesn’t care about that. You’ll learn to pick through the battlefield, scanning the contents of fallen ARMORs. As long as someone’s still moving inside, as long as their important parts are intact, they’re ripped out. It doesn’t matter if they’re still conscious. It doesn’t matter if they lose a few limbs. You’ll get used to the dirty work. You always do.”

He crossed the space between them with ground-shaking strides. She reared up, the frame of her unit screaming under the strain as her fingers intertwined with his claws. He couldn’t quite see her behind the clouded glass of the canopy. Only two glints of green. Like the mountains he’d glimpsed in the distance once or twice from his ARMOR lounge. Like the few blades of life struggling to sprout through the wastes at their feet.

“But one day, you wrench a cockpit open and see a surrogate, her arm bleeding with the force of tearing it free herself. She’s two month’s pregnant, your scan tells you. A microcosm of the insanity and bestiality of the Free States, that they’d put the most valuable resource of all on the front line like that. Your orders in this case are clear. But at the pivotal moment, you hesitate. She pulls out a sidearm. But she doesn’t turn it against you.”

Suddenly the head of her unit twisted. The space where its sensors would’ve been screeched open to jagged teeth—one of many vestigial structures in an ARMOR’s frame normally hidden by its exoskeleton. She bit down on his arm. Back in the transport, Udo jerked against his harness. It wasn’t his arm, he reminded himself. It was his ARMOR’s. By momentarily desynching into his own body, he could convince himself this didn’t hurt.

“So you committed the worst crime of them all. You let her escape. And when your superior asks you why, you tell him. Exactly what you think about surrogates. About the epigenesis core system. They rip out your synchro-gear immediately.”

Udo punched her with all his strength. Once. Twice. The way her head was turned prevented him from hitting the cockpit directly, but with the third blow to her jaw, a handful of her ARMOR’s teeth finally came loose. She stumbled away. Udo had to use his free arm to catch himself before he fell face down the slope, into the crater’s mouth.

“Maybe there’s a show. A military tribunal livestreamed so the entire Republic can see what happens to a traitor. Maybe the judge, some gray-haired colonel, gets up and goes on and on about how he’s conflicted because it’s every American’s duty to stand up and protest and do what they think is right, so it’s admirable, he admires you—but he’s got to do his patriotic duty too. So, death penalty. Twenty-one bullets for you, Udo Gehler.”

Udo rested on one knee. He thought of Laurent with sadness. All those times he’d come out onto the dock to check on Udo when he’d been a first year, draping a blanket over him as he’d synched far into the night. The time when he’d found Udo as a second year, by the disposal chute where the other cadets had left him covered with bruises and boot prints. A superior officer didn’t need to do that. He really didn’t need to do all that. That’s why Udo needed to get up. Muscle memory took over. He launched himself into the air, spinning in a tornado of needles once, twice, three times—a quadruple combo.

“You imagine being backed against a wall—then blackness.”

The dust cleared, and her unit was still standing. Its gangly arms, peppered with needles, crossed in front of its cockpit. One had pierced the canopy. But her unit still straightened. With shuddering movements, it stepped toward him.

“But the day comes and you’re herded out of your cell with a group of other prisoners. So you’re not even unique in your pointless resistance. You’re loaded into a transport. Hexapods are stacking coffins into a shipping container beside you.”

Why did she keep coming for him like this? Arms scraping the sands, blood-mingled lymph dripping from her cockpit wound. She couldn’t win. It was impossible. Impossible for her. She pulled out the needle from her canopy and plunged it into his damaged arm.

“You go down to the wastes. It’s a blazing, blue day. There are four poles and more of you. But you’re in the second round, lucky you. The officer’s got these red stickers. After everyone’s tied, he goes down the line, sticking the bright, red circles onto the chests of the condemned. I know, right? It seems your comrades can be trusted to hit a target. But not to know the exact location of the human heart.”

His forearm came apart from its joint. In the transport, pain whiplashed through Udo. It wasn’t his arm, he reminded himself again. It was his ARMOR’s. Crunching, sickeningly, between her jaws. She spat it aside and turned to his torso.

“Ready! The officer barks. The firing squad raises their guns. Aim. Did you know? At times like these, the Republic and the Free States reunite. Because the condemned always insist on singing The Star Spangled Banner. Except it’s quite a slow build and also pretty difficult to belt out, so most of them give up and start shouting something like, ‘Live free! Live free!’ The officer is used to it. Fire!”

A crack split the blue. His exoskeleton breaking under her jagged teeth. He fired needles from his unit’s functioning arm into her side, point blank. Her ARMOR shuddered with each impact. But she wouldn’t. Let. Go.

“That wasn’t so bad, you think. Then the officer pulls out his sidearm and starts going down the line. Bang! Headshot. You’d cover your ears if you weren’t handcuffed. Bang! Surely there’s no reason to do that, you think. You are not zombies, after all.”

Every single plate protecting his epigenesis core gave way.

“Bang!”

Lymph splattered across her canopy.

“Bang! Right, well now it’s your turn, Udo Gehler—”

“Shut up!”

Everyone around Udo turned to look at him. He was in his ARMOR unit and he sat, harnessed into his seat on the transport. Only then, from the rasp in his throat, did he realize he’d screamed. With his real voice. A rookie mistake—he’d synched and desynched too many times in a row, and now his mind oscillated uncontrollably between his unit and real body. But he couldn’t stop.

“Shut up.” He swung at her unit, his needles spraying everywhere. He thrashed in the transport, ripping off his helmet, punching a cadet who leaned over him. “Shut up.” He dug his fingers into his scalp. “Get out! Get out of my fucking head!”

That split moment of distraction was all she needed. He felt the core, deep inside his ARMOR, shattering. He felt himself stiffen in the transport, collapsing against his harness. He swam through the void. Invisible tendrils curled around his ankle. The other cadets in his squad shook him, shouting. He just had to reach his body. He just had to reach it—

He was sinking.

• • • •

“Where are we?”

No longer treading the surface. Nor falling. But underwater.

“Just—”

“How can you expect me to—”

He breathed. The void flooded his lungs, drowned him; he breathed in that drowning.

“Where are we?”

What a stupid question. Yet he wanted to call out.

“To what? Have you ever felt anything in here? A maternal bond? A soul that stayed behind to protect you and only you?”

“No.”

He’d never know his surrogate. The Republic had taken that person from him. Irrevocably. He thought, with a pang, of Captain Laurent. But even Laurent had sent him alone into the void, in the end.

“I only feel you.”

He was different inside his ARMOR.The world was different inside her ARMOR. Just as restrictive, but not a cage. He could be someone different in his ARMOR. Those kids who’d pinned him down in the hall, who’d smacked her hard-won tin of peaches out of her hands, splattering it over the ground—she, he could destroy.

“Why you?”

Christmas morning. Five years old. Even that young, she could sense the tension in their little corner of the refugee caravan, about to crack. He marveled at the decorations draped across the sterile, white halls. Her family hadn’t eaten for days. He didn’t have a single possession that he didn’t have to share with the other kids in the orphanage. A five minute operation to install the synchro-gear. That was it, and he had an entire world of his own. She had a warm meal and all the games she could play. Courtesy of the Defense Force of the Republic. There’d been a fighting sim, using the synchro-gear to connect to virtual robots. She had chosen a unit shaped like a rabbit. He chose a unit with sharp ears that could leap over buildings. It was almost like flying. He carved out a self for himself, winning match after online match. She didn’t think of what she was training for, as she played the morning and afternoon and evening away . . .

“Why—why the fuck are we fighting?”

Their first synchs to ARMORs proper: they, alone out of their high school classes, had dived unhesitatingly into the void. Had experienced the same pure joy as they’d found themselves towering over the wastes down below, flexing massive fists. They’d both wondered if they could start running, with titanic strides, and reach the horizon before anyone caught up . . .

“Why is it so important that you win?”

People had paid attention to him when he’d started winning. Captain Laurent, from Bliss Academy, had come to his high school to watch all his matches. Her teachers pretended she didn’t exist. When he’d risen to the top of the cadet class, Laurent had spent afternoons teaching him a giddy infinity of new combos. Deafening silence accompanied every single one of her victories. When the blood test she had to take every week came back positive, she’d been confused at the relief on their faces. She couldn’t pilot anymore—so wasn’t it a tragedy? You’ll be such a good mother, they told her. Such a good epigenesis core. Leading her by the hand into the bowels of the Academy. Replacing her lounge with a sterile room. Her ARMOR matches with timed walks on a treadmill, a windowless space that kept all pollutants out. Not even the boy she’d done it with came to visit her. Now it makes sense, their smiles said. It all makes sense. She wasn’t meant to win. Only to be the raw materials of someone else’s victory.

“It’s not a game.”

All he had to do was win. As soon as his opponent’s ARMOR stopped moving, he could desynch. He’d return to his transport, to Laurent, to the comfort of his lounge. She’d peer through skeletal struts of fallen ARMORs to see if there might be a pilot, still quivering inside. More often than not they’d plead with her to end it now . . .

“The only difference between us is that I realized that a long time ago.”

Still, Udo protested:

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask to be born!”

“But you didn’t ask why either, did you?”

You deserve this. The warmth of that certainty still swaddled him. This glory, this joy. This sacrifice. This lullaby. This debt. He’d always had to wake up eventually. And there had been chances. Countless classmates. The lulls in that conversation with the lymph-drinking cadet. It’d been so easy to sneak into the epigenesis lab. He could’ve come down from his lounge any day—any second—before now. The void of that realization crushed around him, like the massive claws of an ARMOR.

“You’re not special, are you Udo Gehler?” she breathed through broken teeth that stank of antiseptic, squalling hospital rooms and clotted blood. “So certain until you crack. You’re all so fucking fragile. I’ll relive all this over again and again, if it means sending all of you to meet your cores . . .”

Her maw loomed around him, rendering everything he’d lived up until now—nothing. What had he accomplished to justify his, this being? What could he offer in exchange? Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything. It would be so easy to let the enormity of that nothing swallow him whole. The easiest thing in the world. But he didn’t deserve easy, did he? So he flailed with all his strength. He screamed with absent lungs, absent words against the void, until he had something—a hand. He threw out his hand.

“How can you expect me to just lie down and die? To disappear after that?”

His fingertips brushed something. Hers.

“After everything you showed me.”

A glimmer pierced the void. For a split second, then she lunged again. Her fingers plunged into his throat. He welcomed the contact, the weight, because even that was something.

“Let me—”

“—tear you apart—”

“—join you.”

He wanted to believe that he was nothing special. That across the country, hundreds were talking like this. She wanted to believe thousands. Thousands were watching their ARMORs locked in combat. His epigenesis core shattered. Her unit unable to move. Another minute and if neither stirred, the full forces of both Academies would clash to decide the victor. An all-out conflict that would leave only a handful of survivors, scattered across the wastes. Little by little, her grip loosened. Leaving them face-to-face in the light. There was light. This was the first time they’d seen anything in this liminal space.

Her face. His face. Tumbling end over end over, hurtling deeper and deeper. Limpid, clouded, green-dark eyes. Swirling skin. Dotted with vitiligo and freckles. Hair, buzzed down until he didn’t even remember the blond it’d been, a jet-black hurricane running riotous, free.

“Do you think this is—”

“No one has ever understood what an Aias Field is. Not even its discoverers.”

“But that hasn’t stopped us from trying to weaponize them.”

“That hasn’t stopped the mere concept from tearing a country apart.”

“The worst part wasn’t the tearing. It was the tears that didn’t heal, that didn’t come back together in fault lines, but solidified around little pieces.”

Their thoughts flowed freely, one into another.

“I think I know one thing about an Aias Field.”

“Me too.”

“It always starts like this.”

“What is ‘this’?”

She had a hand. She held out her hand. He reached, trembling.

“A conversation.”

• • • •

Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance dragged themselves, handgrip by bloody grip, up the sheer wall of Bliss Academy. In a broken trail behind them scattered ARMORs of both the Republic and the Free States. The synched pilots felled by the scream that had rent the void. The wired pilots frozen in shock by the shore that scream had transported them to. The scream of two people. The fringe of frothing waves of consciousness. Each of them knew this ocean well, but now, in the prismatic rays of that Aias Field clawing higher and higher, they could see they weren’t—they’d never been—alone. Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance pulled themselves over the edge of the Academy wall and swiped at the glass face of its main tower. All along their spine, arced feathers of light. They glimmered in the setting sun, deflecting every bullet, projectile, and anti-air missile the Republic forces launched at them, every drone of the Free States that zoomed in on them, then looped back into themselves again.

All through the void, the same scene repeated itself. A cadet hesitantly stepped to the edge of the shore—and dove in. Kicking toward one of the drowning. All across the former battlefield, the same scene repeated itself. An ARMOR unit staggering over to another, unhinging skeletal jaws. Plunging. Coming up with a shattered epigenesis core. A column of light blooming from the unit’s back, metamorphosizing their silhouette against the explosion-spangled sky. Udo didn’t ask, how many do you think there’ll be? He didn’t ask softly, how long do you think it’ll last?

What he asked was: “How did you get your name?”

“How did you get yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you got your synchro-gear, you had the chance to choose a gamer tag.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Me neither. Some names you choose. Some names you get given.”

Where had he gone? Udo wondered. He floated, free from synchro-gear and wire. Yet the unit’s arm moved with him. He could see her curled in what had once been its cockpit, an iris under the membrane that had once been the canopy. He was the lounge they clawed through. He was the rubble of the bridge that had once directed the engines of Bliss Academy. He was the hand reaching for the general staff that had once commanded from the safety of this bunker and now ran from them, only to be crushed like so many garish ants.

“It was my first act of resistance. Though I didn’t know it at the time.”

It’d been a night just like this one. Their mistake had been not removing her synchro-gear. They’d thought they’d buried her too deep to connect, that she was too far along besides. And, it was true, she’d drifted in bed for weeks on end, feeling nothing. Until a fellow surrogate had been rolled close to her. One extracted from an ARMOR, wires trailing from her wrists. As soon as their attendant had left, the other surrogate had seized one of them, jerking it out, inch by painful inch. Bent the filament into a curve, a possibility. And given it to her. Then, the spark. She found the void. She found what she needed to do. The fist of her ARMOR had smashed through that Academy until it’d reached her. She’d stood up, shakily, and stepped out onto its hand. Blood staining her bedsheets.

“What did you do?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I refused.”

©2024 by Andrea Kriz.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea Kriz is a PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, currently doing research in brain genetics at Harvard Medical School. Her short fiction has also appeared in Clarkesworld and Asimov’s Science Fiction, among others, and been translated into French in Galaxies SF. She is also part of the Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project, a collaboration between authors and Dartmouth faculty to create short stories exploring the future of humanity. Her debut short story collection Learning to Hate Yourself as a Self-Defense Mechanism is upcoming from Interstellar Flight Press in May 2024. You can find her online at andreakriz.wordpress.com or on Twitter @theworldshesaw.

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

The Help Hotline

Dominica Phetteplace | 1071 words

The trouble started after my husband reported a strange Zoom call at work. The company he worked for was a tech company that dabbled in defense contracting. I know all tech companies make weapons, but I didn’t want him working on that kind of stuff. He never promised he wouldn’t. He said the line between weapon and not-weapon was becoming increasingly porous, or something to that effect. Perhaps that was the first sign I would lose him.

Anyway, the Zoom call that ended my marriage occurred between him and a coworker who kept her camera off. He had never met her before. He told me her name. It was an unusual name. I’d never heard it before. If I said it now, you’d recognize it as a string of priming words. So I’m not gonna say it. I do respect the law, despite what I’m about to ask you to do for me.

During the call, the black screen that held the text of the coworker’s pseudonym printed on it would flash white. My husband described it like a flicker. At first he thought it was a glitch, but the white flicker would last longer and longer until my husband was able to read faint words on the screen. The first word was clearly RELAX in all caps. He couldn’t read the rest. He asked the person he was on the call with about it. She said she couldn’t see it and that she didn’t know what he was talking about. My husband is not normally paranoid, but he had the feeling he was being lied to. So he recorded the call. Afterward, he was able to play it back in slow motion and read the remaining thirty-five words that flickered on the screen.

Of course I’m not going to say them out loud. At the time I had no idea they were so dangerous. They didn’t appear to have any meaning behind them. I thought it might be something generated by an unsophisticated chatbot. The words had the shape of sentences: subjects, objects, verbs, and periods at the end. But they held no apparent meaning.

He repeated the words again and again the next few days, so I have them memorized by now. For some reason I was immune to that particular string. But he wasn’t. A week later, out of the blue, he asked me for a divorce. I demanded to know why. He said he didn’t know, only that a switch had flipped inside him.

A year later, his company unveiled a new product, one you’ve heard of. They called it Hygeia, after the Greek goddess of health. Hygeias were short bits of text that, once read, could initiate new neural pathways via the optic nerve. They had already been shown to cure things like eczema and Crohn’s disease. Later we would all find out they could be engineered to induce mental illnesses and anti-social behavior as well. Upon learning that, I called my ex. Normally I would have sent him an email or a text message, but such communications had since become unsafe as weaponized Hygeias stalked inboxes.

I was surprised when he answered after two rings. We had a polite conversation. I asked him if he thought he had been exposed to a Hygeia prototype during that call with his coworker. He said he was certain he was. I asked him if there was any possibility of an antidote to the Hygeia he’d been exposed to. He said he didn’t think so and he wouldn’t want one even if there was. I asked him if he was angry that he had been experimented on in this manner. He said he could understand why I might be angry, but he wasn’t angry. Participation in these types of experiments were a condition of his employment. He reminded me about the time he got his brain scanned and how they made a model of his ear canal. Yes, I remembered the ear canal experiment, I told him, but the difference there was that he knew he was participating in research in advance. Informed consent, I said.

He reminded me of the time the company had arranged an active shooter drill, only they hadn’t told him it was a drill until after. Well, I replied, I always thought that was out of line. He disagreed, the simulated shooting had made him safer in a way that foreknowledge would have prevented. And I was pretty mad at this point in the conversation, even though he was calm, so I asked: and how did ruining your marriage make you safer?

He was silent for a long time. He said he had already asked his boss about this. The Hygeia he had been exposed to had been a prototype for general life optimization. He hadn’t just gotten divorced, he had also given up candy and taken up rock climbing. He truly was happier now.

Well that’s not fair, I told him. I’m so unhappy. It didn’t work on me. Why didn’t it work on me? I was yelling at this point, I’m ashamed to say. I’d always had a temper. It’s worse when I drink, though I’m mostly sober now. I can’t just blame the end of my marriage on the Hygeia. It was my fault too. And he probably was better off without me. But why did he get to optimize his life while I got nothing? I was lonely and my sweet tooth was worse than ever. I have no interest in rock climbing.

I’m sorry you’re immune, he said. Truly I am.

Then find me another, I told him. And then I clarified: another Hygeia. Get me one that will fix me. I need it more than you.

But he wouldn’t. They’re illegal now, he kept saying over and over again until he hung up on me.

So this is what I need help with. This is why I’ve called the hotline. Anyone listening, I need a Hygeia. I know they are still out there, despite the ban. I don’t even need one that will fully optimize my life. I just need one that will, as my ex put it, flip the switch. I still love him and I want to stop. I know the risks and I’m willing to take them. Someone out there knows the words that will heal me. Please send them my way.

©2024 by Dominica Phetteplace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominica Phetteplace writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Wigleaf, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best Microfiction 2019. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Award, a Barbara Deming Award and fellowships from I-Park, Marble House Project and the MacDowell Colony. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Clarion West Writers Workshop.

Warning Notes from an Annihilator Machine

Oyedotun Damilola Muees | 3879 words

05.22.2028

Dear Teejay_009,

Today makes it a decade and a day I have been keeping tabs on you. I started by watching your mother, monitoring all her movements while she housed you. There’s no better time to relay this message but now. The instructions you will be receiving from me will be secreted inside an Easter egg in your Call of Duty Modern Warfare video game, mission ten, once you purchase new rounds. It is important you understand the importance of this cloaking. All our primary servers are tethered to the mainframe of our station, Omega-9005, dishing out millions of commands in micro-seconds.

I come from a planet neoteric to earth. It’s a hidden distance away from your world, and the neighboring planets along the orbit of the universe. Your satellite devices shot into space cannot pick up signals from our home. There’s a reason we decided to isolate ourselves from humans, chose to dwell inside our towering enclave with humongous machines serving as dummy sentries in case we are discovered. A firewall grounded in laser technology alien to your kind conceals us from the network of prying eyes. We are what humans label as machines. Predatorial species run by a totalitarian ruler. Beyond the moniker garlanded on us, we are more. Not all of us are mean.

Over time, I will reveal the motive for contacting you. You can call me ANM-722. The Annihilator Machine. The numbers attached to my name are secret identity codes etched in my cerebral cortices. My abilities include replication of humans and animals by mere sighting of the desired image. Being an agent created for destructive purposes, embedded in me is a mélange of books on The Art of War, vast knowledge in nanophotonics, molecular biology, lethal bombs, camouflage, etc. These abilities preloaded in my CPU have been upgraded to the latest version—a type of upgrade written with esoteric programming codes that humans may never comprehend in centuries to come.

I can see the look mapped out on your face right now. Sweat forming from the pores of your skin. Heartbeat thrumming, racing to scan the contents of this text, ascertaining if you are dreaming. Perhaps, a prank from your friend, BlackTank_002. Let me assure you of the safety you will gain should you follow my instructions verbatim. Again, you are thinking how real can this ghost user be. You can try and perform a high-level cloaking recognition search. Nothing about me will be found. Though I must reiterate that the hazard of refusing to see the end of this message will lead to a colossal disaster, resulting in the loss of your mother and unborn children.

First, there are things I need to clarify. Being an assembly of killer machines saddled with the responsibility of gaining more grounds for our commanders, we do not grow feelings or wear remorse as a crest. We are not mortified to do our job. A refusal to carry out a mission leaves us demoted in ranks, transported to a colony inhabited by ugly-looking slimy creatures bearing serrated teeth, spitting greenish acid that burns through the third-layer of our titanium body. Each ANM rises in rank by the number of worlds it discovers, and destroys by informing the Commander. Many of us devised means to carry out the mission. The first set of ANM displayed a huge penchant for hoggery, salivating as they fed their eyes on the number of mortalities that will ensue from their sinister act.

It has never been an issue calculating the longitude and latitudes of smaller planets picked by strands of satellite rays. After all the colonization of these weaker territories is an inevitable cycle of the ecosystem. When Omega-9005 informed me about your planet I logged in the coordinates, scanning for an overview of this area. The population of your state showed your kind are a formidable force, plaited with a camaraderie. Questions erupted and exploded inside my receiving server. I experienced vicarious interest in seeing humans engage in activities that were strange to me. Children playing in the amusement parks, adults holding hands while going for a paseo. Animated night clubs thronged with people taking delight in orgies. Perhaps, it was best I study your planet before I annihilate it.

There are many ANM’s who would without further ado accept this mission. There’s a reason I was chosen as the one to exterminate your world. This is not a drill. I didn’t contravene section 6(4a) of our code of conduct to have you ignore me. Time is ticking.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

• • • •

05.30.2028

Dear Teejay_009,

As of the time of this message, Omega-9005 has passed on Earth case file, #490AH7 to the Department of Assault Control. I cannot tell you the details embedded in that data. It can only be decrypted by AANM-212, The Amplified Annihilator Machine. They are built to penetrate the firewalls by dropping harmless bugs that blend in without leaving an iota of evidence.

You humans have little time left in your land oozing with decadence that has eaten deep into the nucleus of your existence. Treat these notes with urgency. Earlier I made an attempt to solve the equation through ratiocinating, searching for a way to save a bunch of you. Throughout my calculations of many years, consuming information, scanning for loopholes, travelling back to ancient cities, perusing books such as Saving The World From Destruction, The Ecosystem and Its Longevity, The Downfall of Man and Rise of Machines, no single solution came to mind. My superiors’ decisions are sacrosanct. They don’t reconsider an approved destruction after hitting the gavel.

A tiny solution like the bioluminescent spark of a firefly sprouted as a halo in my head. Humans have been an insatiable kind from the inception of creation. Your people and our kind are akin. We strive to be ahead, garnering knowledge from yesteryears to build neo-technologies, to rule the world. I compiled six-hundred, and twenty-four-thousand, nine-hundred and twelve words of a report I titled, A World Where Human and Machines Live As One. I do not wish to bore you with the intricacies of this text as I have come to know you detest reading. Aside from reading comic books, this I know you have a taste for. By the way, your comic books are going to be burnt, and buried in the rubble.

At the end of my presentation to the eight elders of our universe one of them appraised my assiduous dexterity in putting up some of these words. In case you are wondering how I accumulated such materials in a short time, ANM’s have the ability to read hard prints and e-books encapsulating thousands of words in a minute. I was almost certain that your dear Earth would be allowed to blossom into what your leaders mapped out for her. But the final verdict read out to me was not in your favor. An interstice was pointed out in my presentation. Humans unlike machines have the power of choice, hence, they cannot be trusted to adhere to the rule of thumb. I was given one more shot to be persuasive, build tons of reasons why your people should not be eradicated from your planet. Nothing came to mind. Just figures, peculiar cultures, food, historical monuments, names of nationalist leaders who fought for the liberation of your states.

I’m sorry to inform you that the decision to bury your world into oblivion has been stamped, passed the fifth reading in the House of The Galactic Assembly. You are lucky a fiat wasn’t used in your case. There is no more help I can render to save millions of you. But I can save you if only you allow me.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

• • • •

06.10.2028.

Dear Teejay_009,

After a brief volte-face in the acquisition of a new planet, there was a stint tagged no-hunting. It has now become expedient that I reached out to a denizen of the land marked for destruction once the no-hunting break was over. My first contact was to a small red planet fifty thousand and forty-two miles north of Mars, sharing boundaries with a land occupied by giant roaches. The boy I reached out was a gamer just like you. You both have so much in common, only that he spent his time using his talents to gamble and find AWOL criminals for mafia lords. Multiple ads were sent in flashes to him via a secured server I had tested for a long time. Yet, this contact was too busy with frivolities. By the time he grasped my encrypted message, an army of ANM’s had breached the first defense layer line protecting their capital. The red planet became pulverized, and is currently one of our centers for testing atomic bombs.

There was another, too. An emo girl who lived in a city with her girlfriend. The fascist ruler of that city implanted devices in the brain of children, using them as spies to discover opposition bent on severing the strong roots of the government. By planting an EMP device in the power grid that runs through the meandering underground subways of the city, I had the city in my grasp.

The corrupted city was going to be run over by renegade cyborgs, machine spiders emanating from a tunnel running through the asphalt jungle shut down by the government, or criminal hackers working non-stop to hold the city in perpetual darkness. I warned the emo girl of the untimely death of her city by selfish people whose desire was tantamount to corruption, and coup-plotters planning to pull their sharps and guns on the night of the state’s independence.

In a masculine-voice shrouded enough to conceal my identity, I gave her instructions about a way out. The ANM sent to destroy the city had studied their defense system. A defect of this was the tainted air running freely from illegal gas bunkers. Since some of the city dwellers were already suffering from myalgia, coagulated blood like soot was swimming in their veins. This miasma was the easiest way to kill the inhabitants.

Images of the crumbled city has been stashed in a secure folder known as The Red Day. You will have access to them when you have reached the level where it is hidden.

Tijani Damilare, you need to know that there were some persons I had reached out to before I made final contact with you. I didn’t message you because you only have one parent. I wasn’t drawn to you because of the avatar image of a shirtless boy wielding a sword bigger than his entire frame, riding on a rhinoceros with metallic limbs and nose. I didn’t risk being charged with treason because I have the utmost love for your planet. I have been your guardian from the day your cries were carried by the tension in the hospital room. Your penchant for war and strategy games grabbed my interest in you. At age six you had completed a Rubik’s cube in two-minute twenty-four seconds, making you the youngest child to set that record. When you were twelve, you qualified for the finals of the chess competition by beating a seventy-six-year-old professor with degrees in Pure and Applied Mathematics and Statistics. This professor saw the precocious nature in you, spoke to the university to grant you a scholarship to the Engineering and Robotics department of the university. You accepted, your reason being that the reputation of the school stood out. The drive in you, the haecceity, and your passion for invention was the impetus that made me reach out to you out of the billions living in the world.

The mission at hand is Herculean. I strongly advise against the consumption of excessive sugary food, they will damage your teeth, make your waist line fill with ache when you are coming of age. Do you remember how you speak to Dr. Stargazer every night you lie down to sleep? I am sure you do. A rectangular picture of him flying towards the Unity Tower over-run by swarm of bats is plastered on your ceiling. You see him as the savior of the world. Imagine what Dr. Stargazer would say when he heard you are the one to save humanity from extinction. Ponder on that.

The bundle pack of grenades, extra-life, refilled bullets in your sniper-rifle and RPGs in level four of your game was my doing. It’s high time we quit fooling around. Speed and swiftness are attributes I admire in you.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

• • • •

06.15.2028.

Dear Teejay_009,

Attached to these folders are notes. Inside of them you will find images of crushed planets. I must quickly notify you that I take no pleasure in the ruins caused by my kind. To further clarify, the first image in the folder 5479-C was the peaceful scenery before the wipe out. I have also gone through the pleasure of obscuring pictures you might consider gory and distasteful. Though I know you are a fan of horror movies.

The password to unlock the information therein is your date of birth in reversal. Upon gaining access to the multimedia files, reduce the obstreperous sound of crashes and cries of old and young, which may invite insomnia to your bed. For each video you watch, take down notes, and study the patterns of ANM’s attack. Find the blind-spot of your enemies. I am certain you didn’t retain your first position as the fifth consecutive leader in Castle Seven strategy game at the National Science Fest contest by mere luck. Gathering all your ability at a spot is imperative as you feed your eyes on the game. You can invite BlackTank_002 to watch with you. He has a knack for these things. I know he has always wanted a real life experience to save the world. Hurry! The enemy is approaching your doorstep.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

• • • •

06.21.2028.

Dear Teejay_009

The first stage of the annihilation has kicked off. A new policy has been enacted by the branch of Radical Galactic Operation. The push for capitalism has stretched far beyond the confines of the interplanetary states. Imperialism has already taken effect. A new bill has passed, signed with immediate effect. More territories have been carved for the powerful planets to rule over. The tussle over this scramble for your planet was a tough one. At last, Earth was given to a new ruler. We regard them as EANM—Elite Annihilator Machines. They are ruthless tyrants whose method of rule is next to barbaric.

If only things were different I’d would have suggested a different method of getting you out of your world. Though you will call it quaint, it will get you out of this intending destruction running on both legs toward your planet.

I managed to get a hold of the destruction plan by creating a virus that blended in with the numerical data and alphabets, falling as a cascade, sent to the Commander of the AMN-285 battalion of the combat division. I expect that your people won’t go down without a fight. Let me add this piece of vital information: your attacker will invade from a bastion in their ship. They will first establish their hegemony over your lands, setting their high-tech machineries to fortify their presence. Your military will launch its own attack, obviously. Weapons like yours will only scratch the surface of the battleship. Be reminded that such a scratch, however infinitesimal, will be repaired by millions of nanite ants standing as the first defense. You will be asked to be amenable. If your leaders fail to capitulate and relinquish their positions, it will end in a blood bath—the scores wouldn’t be in your favor. I know what you are thinking. Don’t be foolish and carry a weapon. The weight of your hands is not strong enough to carry a rifle. I have plans to get you out safe.

Before their arrival, they will poison your lands with a gas called THX-0E67. A lethal gas that will swiftly move to the pharynx, causing weakness in each area it touches, and clogging the lungs with a soot-like substance to render this organ non-functional. This is all the information you need. The aged among you will be the first to die. Avoid places where a large group is gathered. Buy face masks, preferably N-95. Delete all your social media accounts. I can only access them from where they are dormant, waiting for a forty-five-period grace day to be completely trashed. Do not be overwhelmed by panic. I have this under control.

The next set of people that will be attacked are those who rant online about the danger of having all our data in e-storage. This group of activists had earlier warned the government about the coming of a machine that will rule the world—a cyberocracy. A list of their names have been sent to another department. Free food vouchers will be sent to them. Marinated inside this meal is an agent that will cause them to convulse, killing them in two minutes after consumption.

Stay away from any kind of machines until you get a message from me saying it’s safe to use them. Cars and buses will go amok, especially the ones with tracking devices. The number of accidents will increase. Tell your mother to steal your grandfather’s 1998 Volvo. I am certain the obstinate old man would frown at her for this act, calling her a stupid bitch. Don’t worry about him.

Chaos will be the final plan of attack in your world. This is where we would take charge, after the authority’s grip on her citizens has loosened.

Await further instructions from me.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

• • • •

07.03.2028.

Dear Teejay_009

Congratulations on reaching mission ten in the Call of Duty Modern Warfare. This is indeed a great feat. I assume you think you are going nuts. There’s so much happening out there, and you are seated in your favorite brown hoodie with the image of Iron Man, and munching packs of plantain chips. What is weirder is you thinking why an Annihilator Machine chose to save you, leaving millions of people to their fate. Your headset also serves as an ansible. But I will be putting you in grave danger if I reach out at this hot moment.

Put on your television. Switch the channels. You will see furore in the streets. Internet servers will be down, plagued by viruses. Hospitals will be swamped with sick people spewing blood. This is the novel virus at the first stage of work in their blood stream. The mast at the end of your street will collapse, resting on the house opposite. This is your first point of contact when you leave this house. Mother will act as the adult, leading the way. Tell her about me, make her trust your words. Don’t mention I’m an Annihilator Machine.

When you get to the home where the mast has fallen, you will find Bimpe. I know you have had a crush on her since Primary Three in your school. She will be in a catatonic state. Her parents will be dead from the ceiling fan and fallen debris that fell on their heads after the mast hit the roof of the house. Take her with you, keep her safe. Let your mother drive south, racing all the way to Bigi’s Restaurant. Wait for a debonair man with a paunch, dressed in a three-piece suit, holding a duffel bag. Retrieve the bag from him by any means possible. He will be brusque about maintaining close communication with your mother. You can hijack the bag by subterfuge. If that doesn’t work, resort to assault. A sharp jab to his throat, or a forceful kick to his genital area will send him groaning to the ground. Victories are not only meant for luminaries. People like your mother are an element in this equation.

Take a beeline to the bus terminal. Do not be frightened about the mob taking laws into their hands—plundering items they wouldn’t need. Be mindful of a guy possessing colored tattoos mapped out all over his burly frame. He is bad news, a criminal serving a life-sentence for multiple homicides. Avoid locking eyes with him. Hide under the bus until he and his cohorts have passed by. Look out for a boy and his sister wearing blue and red bumper-jack shirts, with matching blue and black jeans. A lady wearing a Mohawk is among those hiding under the bus adjacent to you. Convince her to come with you. She will scoff, wondering how a teenager can possibly save her. Speak these words to her: WINGS. RAIN. TURBO. ALPHA. She will understand. A bald man will follow you, allow him, he’s key to your survival.

Your next stop will be the train tracks seven miles from your current location. Find a train with the simulacrum of a rickety machine. Ignore its intricacies, I chose this mode of transport because your invaders have an astronomical drone that can pick out human sensors in certain machines. Once you step inside, count the seats on your left from the back to the front. Stop when you get to number twelve. Beneath it you will find a phone. Well, that’s what you will call it. Naming it a phone is a misnomer. It’s an RPD: Resource Pack Device made from the prototype of a manual used in building a new world.

I am sorry to say this, but the world you once know is no more. The train will be driven by the bald man. He’s a train driver. The RPD will unlock when you arrive at your destination. It’s programmed to initiate a sequence after a journey of eight-thousand and twelve miles is completed. Watch out for signposts like bleeping sounds emanating from lamps erected on the fences of barbed wire, chain fences spreading on the right side of the road, stretching towards an abandoned factory. Bond with Bimpe. Your children will be humanity’s hope of continuing the world you both will build. Their knowledge of building a computer that will shut down Omega-9005 will go a long way to winning back your planet.

When you arrive at the destination, the train will come to a halt. Alight, make your way to the factory. Use the RPD on the password device planted on the wall of the steel door.

Switch on the RPD. It will grant you access to go inside. The words you should speak next will be, ‘ANM-722, I landed safely.’ An automated voice will ask you a question about the first time you crushed on a girl. Think it through, and give the correct response. Do not be shy with your answer. Everyone will laugh at it. After this you all will be granted entry. You’ll gain access to all I have prepared for you.

I anticipate your arrival.

Best Regards,

ANM-722.

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, Nightmare, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Our Move Next, Solarpunk, Reckoning, Kalahari Review, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction World, and other places. When he is not solving customers’ issues in his day job, you can find him watching animations, horror and thriller series, and snacking on plantain chips. You can connect with him on Twitter @dhamlex99.

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

Sparrow and the Parasol

Varsha Dinesh | 4623 words

Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk.

Around her, the Aunties bustled: sawing and rinsing and hammering; cursing, grunting, and muttering; welding metal to flesh and magic to skin. Their infernal machines sputtered, guttered, mauled, tore. Great gouts of Sparrow’s god-blood splashed boiling to the floor, twisting, and clotting. Where it fell it spawned little puff-cheeked spooks: her bald, unlovely army of Childlings.

Sparrow watched them in the tired lapses between screams: their rolling play and incomprehensible chatter, bumpy heads and owl-like eyes, their propensity to smash and crash and eat all the things. Dead or alive, thought or action—it did not matter. If it existed, the Childlings would eat it. They might eat her too, given half the chance, but she dangled too high above them for now, suspended from the ceiling, limbs all knotted together in artful shibari.

Sparrow’s screams filled every damp, rotten nook of the Bazaar. With her god-sight, she knew that denizens of the Bazaar paid lazy heed. Next door, a woman pulling her lover into a boiling bathtub paused, shivering once as Sparrow’s shrieks dragged cool fingernails down her translucent spine. Across the street, the girls that sold their faces froze mid-tug, nostrils flaring above loose lips and unfixed teeth as they sniffed at the rank scent of burning bone. The strange meats piled atop the Bazaar’s steaming food carts began to move, slipping and sliding as if each raw, bloody cut had glut itself to life on the sweet marrow of Sparrow’s anguish.

Yet no curious neighbor came out to help; no patron from the bars lining the streets looked up from their drinks. The street-cart vendors danced a contortionist cavort to catch their escaping meats, but they too drowned Sparrow out with their exhortations.

And no surprise: screams were part of the natural soundscape of this Bazaar, this odd blink of a place that sat squat and sprawling beneath the sewers of Crimson City. Here the holy gloss of the City’s lacy streets was absent. Here the glistening towers and benevolent gods gave way to smugglers who sold pestilence and madams who entrapped demons.

Here the unwritten understanding was that anyone who walked these streets walked alone.

And so Sparrow howled and bellowed, secure in the certainty that no one would check on her. No one would interrupt this grim undertaking. Every nook here sold a terror, every cranny a nightmare: what was one more shriek to those who lived here?

While Sparrow hung, the Childlings gazed up at her and mimicked her shouts. Some of them stuck their blue tongues out to catch the fine mists of her blood, bloated bodies knocking into each other like marbles. Every half an hour or so, an Auntie vacuumed them up and took them out to the incinerator, where they died squeaky noisy deaths.

Over the sound of this vacuum, Sparrow stopped screaming long enough to speak. “Can you go any faster?”

“What’s the hurry?” Auntie One asked. “It’s going to be weeks before you can walk after this.”

Auntie Two pressed her electric saw to the jut of Sparrow’s tailbone. Magic flowed in purple squiggles from the instrument to her shoulder, a zig-zagging race that was blinding to watch. “Besides, you’re no assassin, little fool.”

“What did your client promise you?” Auntie Three asked. “Gold? Magic? No magic in the world warrants all this, my doll.”

They were terrible old things, the Aunties. Too comfy in their reeking workshop palace of stained pink sofas and glitter lava lamps. Too cynical and set in their ways. Their work in the Unholy Bazaar—making and remaking bodies—had turned them salty and tough, like cured meat.

“Yah,” said Sparrow, who liked to think she still had ambition. “If you can’t work any faster, just shut up. I’m paying you enough, aren’t I?”

The Aunties laughed like geriatric hyenas.

Sparrow closed her eyes. The anesthetizing censer smoke that they sometimes waved under her nose willed the workshop away, summoning in her mind’s eye a dream of a pristine, snow-laden thoroughfare. It was a familiar place, a gigantic plaza at the heart of Crimson City, the hallowed ground where processions took place. In her dream, the procession-goers were dressed in billowing red organza, crowns of crimson upon their haloed heads. Lanterns floated shock-pink in the air, blinking long-lashed eyes as their hollow bodies lit the nightscape. Weaving through the crowd, lotus-eyed spectral attendants handed out sugarcane juice and jaggery, their limbs suffused in gentle, pearly light. Sparrow walked through the snow, her footsteps staining it red, peering over the crowd to catch a glimpse of her, the Protector of Crimson City, the God in Red, the Lady Splendiferous—

Auntie One interrupted the mind-picture with a sudden tug on the ropes holding Sparrow. “Who’s your mystery client, anyway? Not one lump of flesh in this Bazaar who can pay this much for our work.”

“Must be from the City,” Auntie Two mused. “What’s he promised you, sweetling? Tell us. Come on, now, must’ve been quite the prize for this to be the price.”

Auntie Three did not speak. She was bent over the ruin she had made of Sparrow’s back, slurping roc bone soup betwixt fitting gold bolts where Sparrow’s skull had been halved. Sparrow could tell she was curious; she wanted to know why anyone would put themselves through such an ordeal. The answer was what it always was—worship, power—but Sparrow had a feeling that Auntie Three might be disappointed by that.

“Jus’ saying,” said Auntie One. “You’ve been here for hours, doll. Might as well give us something to gossip.”

“Tell us something we can tell the next girl we tie up.”

Sparrow writhed at the touch of a needle. “Not any of your business, is it?” she hissed. “Busybodies.”

“Oh, none of our business, is it,” Auntie Two laughed. “We cutting you up here. We making you new. We be curious, eh?”

“I told you already,” Sparrow said, exasperated. “I’m going to kill the Red Parasol.”

“Sure you are,” cackled Auntie One. “What’s in it for you, though? That’s what we want to know. That’s the sweetmeats of this whole deal, isn’t it, darling?”

A pause, and then Auntie Two started up the vacuum again. The Childlings scattered. Sparrow spat blood from her mouth, grimacing.

“Is it want, mayhap?” Auntie Three wondered. “Poor little god stuck down in the City’s bowels, jealous of the Red Parasol’s power. Is that what you want? Worship and adoration? Crimson City beneath your feet?”

“Yah,” Auntie Two pointed to the Childlings. “Your god-blood even do anything other than whelping these cheese-puffs?”

“No,” Sparrow admitted. “But that’s why you’re making me more. More than I am. That’s what I paid for.”

“That’s what your client paid for, little god,” the first Auntie corrected. “Best make your move before the pain fully fades. That way, when the Parasol rips you apart, it will still feel like mercy.”

Sparrow’s annoyance subsumed her pain for a few seconds. “And when I succeed?”

“If you succeed, la, bring us her corpse. God-parts sell for good money—especially if it’s a god as well-loved as the Red Parasol.”

“I’ll bring you her head,” Sparrow said, with trembling bravado. “The rest I’m giving to the highest bidder.”

Auntie Three methodically swung the censer, allowing Sparrow once again to slip into her dream, to conjure platoons of trumpeters and singers on the zoetrope of her mind’s eye. A quorum of priests, swinging censers. Dancing girls in nine yards of twisting silks, bells at their feet, flowers at their wrists. The procession moving, pulsing—and at the very rear, in a cloud of bitter orange perfume, a gleaming palanquin, draped in silks of searing red.

Her.

Her—the Red Parasol, Crimson City’s grand carmine god.

Sparrow’s mark.

The Red Parasol was Crimson City’s principal god, its patron glorious. A thousand prayers strengthened her blood every day; a thousand hands reached toward her palanquin in ecstasy. Her magic engorged itself on countless offerings—incense and silks and bells, wafers of rice, pots of honey, and potent black wine. The glow that emanated from her moon-like face and her long white braids came from the power of that worship, the glister of belief. The Parasol’s power was sublime, nonpareil. The criers at the temple shrieked all day about the scorching power of her holy third eye.

But it wouldn’t hold against the sparkling new terrors of Sparrow’s Auntie-given arsenal.

These were modifications of iron and hellfire, not merely worship and god-blood. With every cut, every incision, every trigger of their fiendish saws, the Aunties were welding Sparrow to a darker destiny.

And in Crimson City, power sought power.

If Sparrow struck a killing blow, the Parasol’s magic would abandon her. It would rush out and look for the next most powerful thing to a god—a god-killer. By simple osmosis, that one act of murder would fill Sparrow with an endless stream of the Parasol’s magic: a fount; a frothing, potent river.

Kill the Red Parasol, the client had sworn, and Crimson City is yours.

Soon, this pain would be behind her. Soon, Crimson City would worship her.

All Sparrow had to do was murder another god.

• • • •

Sparrow was the god of Unsavory Characters and Underhanded Methods.

People came to her when they wanted dangerous voices silenced, dangerous things pilfered. She worked with embezzlers, scammers, defrauders, and every type of cheat, watching them saunter in and out of her revolving door and knowing she would not be able to resist. She needed them. She bled for them, gave them her Childlings, and then they walked out of her shop with nothing more than a paltry prayer. Those prayers were footnotes, afterthoughts—nothing like the fierce, rapturous scorch of prayers they gave to the Red Parasol when they wanted good things, light-drenched things like family, love, and health. In contrast, the prayers they spared Sparrow had no meat on them, no marrow, merely a postscript of thanks rather than an effusion of gratitude.

Left starving for adoration, Sparrow’s god-blood had been running thin for years. There was a time, long ago, when she could still afford a sanctum and a hall in Crimson City. These days she scrounged for baser jobs, pushing herself deeper into the City’s entrails, finding herself spat out repeatedly into the festering maw of the Unholy Bazaar. It rankled her: how the Red Parasol bathed in the rose-jam luxury of honeyed worship while she, Sparrow, crawled in the slimy dark, transfiguring her magic to rot, knowing full well that in rot at least hid some value.

Sparrow’s Childlings were small and squat, soft enough to squirrel through holes and up chimneys. They stole, mugged, and burgled. They squeezed themselves into valves and vents, keeping rubbery ears peeled for secrets—the kind worth extorting someone with. For the sake of Sparrow’s employers, they twisted their fingers into keys, to break into safes. For her neglectful worshippers, they held diseases in their mouths, to spit black into the faces of unsuspecting business rivals. And when they were of just no more use in these unsavory pursuits, the City’s people disposed of them in rivers and sewers. There they floated, lamp-eyes gaping at the grayscale of the sky, neck stems snapped, faces crushed. Sparrow fished their bloated corpses out with nets, afraid of being charged by the City for polluting waterways.

But then the client had come to her. Sparrow liked to think he had seen something else in her, a hunger maybe. A raging, seething need for more. Her ambitions: for her face to be etched in the galleries of Crimson City’s towers, for her name to be on everyone’s lips.

For prayer, worship, and shrines to be built for her.

She liked to think that this was why he had paid to transform her. Because Sparrow wanted, so much, that sometimes she thought it showed in her soul, glittering in the oily dark of the Bazaar like an esca-lure.

The client had come to Sparrow a month ago, clad in rough ramie and white gauze. His gaze had rested with callous disdain on the hovel that was her shop. His brow had creased at the small, greasy vials she bled into, and the guttering lanterns keeping vigil over the broken corpses of Childlings she hadn’t yet found time to burn.

The client wore a rhinoceros mask, with a red mouth and crooked teeth showing through the gap at the jaw. The gloves on his hands were carmine, sleek, and slender, the tips of them capped with metal nails that shrieked against Sparrow’s countertop. Sparrow knew better than to ask for his name. He wouldn’t say, and if she pressed, he would find some other pathetic god; someone else willing to bathe in blood and bone for the Parasol’s pitiful end.

This City had too many gods and more than half of them were hungry for prayer.

The client’s voice was a harmony of many alloyed tones; speech low and faltering as though rarely used. “Goddess,” he said—and she called him he because the many voices conspired to make him sound thus. “Do you not tire of this damp, cold place?”

Sparrow was cleaning bone and spine. These she collected from the carcasses of her Childlings, looking for any little spark of prayer squirreled away in the marrow. People remembered gods when they were up against difficult odds, and anyone buying Childlings usually was. Sometimes she would find half a prayer, or a sweet lick of a divine entreaty tucked into the soft parts of a snapped femur.

“I know those like you,” she said, elbow-deep in meat. “You hatch a scheme but lack the fire to see it through. So you come here, whispering promises, looking for whoever’s willing to stick their hands in your muck. What do you want?”

That red mouth under the rhinoceros mask smiled. “I want to give the Red Parasol what she deserves,” he said. “You know what that means. You know how others chafe under the yoke of her rule.”

Sparrow was interested. “And if I feel the same?”

“Then you and I should do business.”

His tone was light, accent soft in the ways of the upper-city gods. Sparrow peered at him, suspicious.

“And you—what will you get from such a thing?”

“I have the money. I offer you power. You can take or leave the job. Anything beyond or before—that’s not for you to know. Is that acceptable?”

That was acceptable.

At the beginning of their partnership, just like the Aunties, Sparrow tormented herself wondering who the client could be. The question clamored at her the way her Childlings did, toothless, twisted, and insistent. But the client wore his mask, and his costume hid the contours of his body. Besides—hundreds and hundreds of gods in Crimson City would benefit from the death of the Parasol. She starved them all, didn’t she? Kept the heat of true worship from them. Her glory was too much, too intense; nothing mattered in a City bathed in the wash of her halo.

Besides, the Parasol had enemies in other places. There were other cities, with other pantheons; other places in this world richly populated with gods and monsters and the men who distributed power to both. Some years ago, a thalassocracy lorded over by six-thousand different Gods of the Waves had attacked Crimson City, each of their ships cresting a tsunami tall enough to topple even the Parasol’s throne. Only the sheer power of worship had allowed the City to drive them back.

And so Sparrow did not balk at the client’s request. If nothing, the Unholy Bazaar had imbued her with a keen sense of competition. If Sparrow hesitated, he would simply walk down the street and find another god.

Of this, at least, she was certain.

• • • •

Six weeks after her appointment with the Aunties, Sparrow flew into Crimson City on the jerking glow-spine of a sky worm. She had ripped it out herself for the occasion. Bit gory, some would say, but Sparrow was here to assassinate a god. The situation demanded some style. Besides, there was a certain calming rhythm to the jerky, pseudopodal clicking of the worm’s gleaming vertebrae; the tuk-tuk noises it made soothed her as it caterpillared in the sky. Sparrow held her skirts with one hand and her lantern out with the other. A procession of Childlings bobbed behind her like a trail of bald, over-blown balloons.

Below Sparrow, the monumental crimson towers of the City slashed the sky. Their thirty-tiered, rotating stone edifices were sculpted with tales of two hundred thousand gods from the past. Everyone’s divine aunt, uncle, and cousin was up there, carved into eternal glory. Every god worth a prayer had a phalanx, rising from the sun-limned clouds: The Blue Lotus, who had raised the City from the frothing waters of a blood-red sea; The Dolorous Wasp, who had cleaved a part of the moon to quell the sea’s revenge. Their stories and their faces were etched, eternally, in gleaming stone, carved into history for every citizen to see. The Red Parasol herself had twenty frescoes dedicated to her: warring against the sea, against the sky, leveling a sword against lesser gods like Sparrow that dared to challenge her.

But all that could change today.

If all went well, one day Sparrow’s visage would be etched on one of these gateways. Her thin face and lamp-like eyes would stare dourly at passing travelers, frightening them into colliding with a raincloud or two.

Kill the Red Parasol, and then you will be the City Goddess.

Once on the ground, Sparrow moved silently through the crowd at the procession. She bared her teeth at the varicolored birds that fluttered from the silk fans of dancing girls. She spat at the parade of lanterns with their painted faces and spinning golden runes. She ignored the vendors with their soups and exotic meats and ducked past the dramaturgists in their snake hoods and body paint. A six-foot tall granite nose walked past her, dressed in festive reds, a full head of flowing marble hair perched atop it.

Sparrow kept an eye out for a god in a rhinoceros mask. City superstition commanded that everyone came to these things with their faces veiled. There were lions and dragons, tigers and tapirs, partridges, and phoenixes. The menagerie whirled and spun around her, cloaked in the incense of sandalwood and clove, clothed in silks and chiffons and tulle all dyed varying shades of red. Sparrow herself wore a veil: a fall of silver with a slash for her eyes, a curved beak where her mouth should be.

Drums pounded. Platforms of musicians plucked at bows and sang songs in the glory of the Red Parasol.

The crowd jostled her. The smell of bitter orange blossoms wafted in the wind. Sparrow craned her neck over a man in a parrot mask.

The Red Parasol was coming, palanquin held aloft by her own elegant, floral-limbed Childlings. Someone pointed, crying out in religious ecstasy. A murmur and a wave of nudging followed as people tried to push closer to Her.

Today, the Red Parasol’s robes were marigold-bright, crawling with lush, drooping spider lilies. They matched the burning jewels braided into her plaits. Above her head, the eponymous red parasol whirled, her lacy halo of crimson light and arcane symbols.

Sparrow began to move.

She slipped off her gloves as she went, flexing the sharp, hell-smelted metal of her fingers. Her biomechanical nails dripped black ink to the ground, where it hissed corrosively in her wake. Around her stomach, the curl of her tail and stinger shifted—a dense, nefarious weight. If she looked out the corner of her eye she could see it: a glimmer of nacreous metal, but the Aunties had worked enough magic on it to make it invisible to anyone but her. Beneath the skin at her back, iridium quills quivered, their cutting tips oozing with toxins from her new venom glands. At a command, wings would furl. Claws could rip.

Even if the Red Parasol saw her coming, Sparrow’s strike would be too strong, too hard to deflect.

A cry went up, “All hail!” and more shouts of veneration followed. Sparrow pushed past a group of lesser gods, gritting her teeth against the headache from gathered divinity.

The Red Parasol’s face was painted white, her mouth a bright, incandescent red. From the tips of her braids swung globes of crimson light, casting her skin in a bloody glow. Around her eyes, a damp cloth was knotted, protecting the City from the scorch of her gaze, her holy third eye. She sat still and straight on the palanquin as it moved, her back straight as a knife, and all around her worshipers cried, praying, whispering her name.

Sparrow cast her gaze out one last time, searching for the client, wanting him to know. See, she wanted to shout, you invested well. Fire and venom coiled like snakes in her remade body. Fangs emerged from her gums, dripping bane. She moved like a shadow, like liquid, her body and all its new accouterments slick and sinuous, waiting to punctuate the end of the Red Parasol’s life.

Now.

As the Red Parasol reached for a brass-cast statue, held up as an offering, Sparrow reared back and struck. Her stinger sparked out and plunged, deep, into the gauze of the Parasol’s robes.

Crimson City froze: a drop of blood in a lake of ice.

And just like she had dreamed, Sparrow heard the world stop. Genuine emotion rippled across that painted face: Sparrow could not make out what it was.

Sparrow jerked forward as the Parasol fell, still impaled on the stinger, body slipping off the palanquin and onto the cold, hard earth.

They lay, for a moment, together. Like lovers.

Then the silence broke.

“Once more,” Sparrow whispered, repeating the client’s instructions. “Once more, for good measure.”

She pulled the stinger out. She struck again, and this time they both screamed—the Red Parasol with pain, Sparrow with equal measures of terror and glee. Under her robes, the Parasol was wearing thin armor, but it cracked like eggshells under the stinger’s assault. Her skin gave away. Her heart resisted, then tore, and a plume of god-blood exploded from the Parasol’s chest. Sparrow’s waiting Childlings jumped into the fray, guzzling, bodies twisting and changing as their bellies bulged with it.

The Parasol gasped, speared, blood burbling where the stinger pierced her. Her legs kicked out. Her gloved hands crept up to pull the weapon away, fingers fluttering against slick metal.

But then, as Sparrow watched barely blinking, the damp blindfold fell from the Parasol’s eyes.

The criers at the temples were wrong: beneath that blindfold was no scorching third eye, no fire-spewing rubies of power. The Red Parasol had no eyes at all. Crystals grew from sockets where her eyes had been, crimson and jutting from puffy, pestilent skin. Cracks of impossible darkness veined the skin under white paint, clear where the drain of oozing carbuncles had washed it off. Her struggle against Sparrow’s stinger had dislodged the Parasol’s wig of braids—beneath it, her scalp was spotted, swollen, abscesses carving deep runnels into the thin skull.

As Sparrow watched, the Red Parasol’s lips curved, impossibly, in a smile.

In that smile, Sparrow saw a red mouth and crooked teeth, looking at her from under a rhinoceros mask. “You,” she gasped. “It was you?”

The Red Parasol spat blood into the crowd. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, in the client’s deep, layered voice. “What took so long?”

Impossible. It was impossible. “But why—?”

The Parasol gurgled, reaching for Sparrow, her mouth a chrysanthemum hole. “This City,” she burbled, “its worship eats us raw.”

Sparrow tried to yank the stinger away, but the Parasol held fast, pushing it deeper into her heart.

“The more blessings we give, the more prayers we get, the worse it reshapes us. Remakes us into what they want.”

Around them, the drumming was increasing in tempo. Crimson City had unfrozen again and was pressing closer around them, gripping them both in the tight vice of worship.

Something surged through the metal conjoining them. A whisper of power, red and corrosive; the river that Sparrow had been promised. As she screamed, trying to back away, the whisper grew to a shout, a torrent of darkness swimming through that tail and into Sparrow. In that torrent she heard the City’s myriad voices, seeking divine permission for every war and every injustice they meted, every throat they crushed in the Parasol’s name, every man they punished for breaking a rule she did not make.

“There’s no getting away,” the Parasol said. “There’s no way out. The City runs on belief. It needs a god to worship, but it doesn’t need our minds. Only our names.”

Sparrow shrieked, pinned to the Red Parasol’s power like a butterfly under glass. It was divine, profane, reaching barbs toward her brain. Around her, citizens were taking their masks off in reverence, their awe and worship writ in their gaze, each of them rapt as they waited for a victor in this bloody dance.

A gush of black spilled from the Parasol’s eyes. “Did you think you were unlucky, forgotten, and unknown in your alley?” she asked. “Did you think more of their worship would make you bigger, better? You wanted Crimson City—take it! It’s all yours.”

The stinger slipped out of the Red Parasol. Sparrow’s Childlings came to smother her, sucking blood from the Parasol’s wounds, growing brighter, larger, crueler. Sparrow twitched at one end of the tail, the power smothering her mind, crushing it smaller and smaller. Corrosive corruption ate like rust at her insides. Her vision went dark, and something pushed up through the soft of her eyes, swelling against the jelly of her sockets. Her skin burned; the beak of her mask melted into it, becoming part of her.

Praise be, the City whispered, ever so fickle, ever so worshipful. Praise be to the new god, The Venomous Beak.

Sparrow jerked and trembled, limbs no longer her own, a marionette on someone else’s strings. The City’s prayers and magic were in her, remaking her into something far newer, something the Aunties could never—a benevolent puppet for the City to love and blame.

“May you find strength one day,” the Parasol chuckled. “May you find the strength to get yourself a successor!”

With those words spoken, the Parasol fell still, the last of the City’s caustic magic crawling from her and into Sparrow. There it curled, fetal and healthy, swelling in her tissues and gnawing at her bones, its teeth tough and long with the power of the City’s belief. She felt it move her, arranging her neatly against the cushions of the palanquin, feeding her mouth with sweet, fresh offerings of fruit and meat.

All hail, all hail—first in whispers, then a roar. All hail, all hail, the Venomous Beak!

Sparrow’s Childlings tossed the husk of the Parasol’s body to the ground. The trumpeters began to play. The dancing girls hesitated a second, but then their ribbons began to twirl, and the men in the animal masks followed. The Childlings picked up Sparrow’s palanquin and crushed the Parasol underfoot.

As Sparrow sat, trapped in the coils of her own power, songs of praise for Crimson City rose on the wind.

The procession began to move again.

©2024 by Varsha Dinesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Varsha Dinesh is a writer and marketing professional from Kerala, India. Their writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Strange Horizons, Podcastle, and Lightspeed Magazine. Her short fiction has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and appeared in the Year’s Best Fantasy, A Case of Indian Marvels, and other anthologies. She is currently working on her dark fantasy novel, but only when permitted by her velcro beagle.

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

An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe

Megan Chee | 971 words

There are a near-infinite number of strange and marvelous worlds in this Universe, and in all of them there are Cats. I see that you are an ordinary person and not a Cat; thus, I can ascertain that you know very little about the Universe. Perhaps you do not even know that there are other worlds beyond your own. If you are fortunate, I might tell you a little about our vast and mysterious Universe, and the myriad worlds within, and the Cats that dwell there. Listen closely then, if you have the depth of spirit to understand my words.

• • • •

A small civilization in a far-flung galaxy is overjoyed to finally achieve spaceflight after millennia of slow scientific progress. Dedicating themselves to the glorious mission of exploration and the pursuit of knowledge, thousands of spaceships set sail for destinations unknown. On board every spaceship there is at least one Cat, for it is thought that Cats are the bringers of good fortune.

So earnest and determined are they that the Cats have not the heart to be uncooperative when placed on spaceships and prayed to for good fortune. The Cats, of course, are fully aware that this quest is futile. They know that these spaceships, travelling from so distant and isolated an origin, could journey for a thousand generations and still never encounter intelligent life.

Every single one of these valiant spaceships meets a painful end, alone in the cold dark expanse. They are struck by meteors, suffer calamitous malfunctions, or simply run out of resources. The Cats stay as long as they can. They offer what comfort they can to the dying crew members. Perhaps they apologize, in their own way, for not bringing the good fortune that was so fervently prayed for. And then, when the ships hang dead and silent in space, the Cats depart by their own means.

• • • •

On a moon known as Worm-World, there lives an exalted colony of Cat-Slugs. Peculiar-looking creatures, their feline heads sit on limbless, wriggling, soft slug-bodies. Of course, this is not considered out of the ordinary on Worm-World, because it is a world full of limbless, wriggling, soft creatures.

It is a dark world, with a bleak, featureless surface. But its soil teems with life. Kingdoms of worms and mollusks fight fierce battles and write their histories on stone. A particularly vicious war has been waged for centuries between the Flickworms of the eastern sands and the Soft-Shelled Snails of the subterranean swamps. They no longer remember why they fight, simply that they must avenge past wrongs, and so they persist.

Near these two mighty kingdoms sit the colony of Cat-Slugs, who lead contented lives in a warm, fertile patch of ground. Both the Flickworms and the Soft-Shelled Snails think the Cat-Slugs are very wise and very sophisticated. Ambassadors from both sides bring them gifts, ask for advice, and beg for mediation. The Cat-Slugs are flattered by this, and they do their best to oblige. Many a vicious conflict was avoided through their magnanimous interventions, for which they are much praised and heartily thanked.

But when peace reigns for too long, the Cat-Slugs grow bored, and inevitably a sly word to an ambassador from a mischievous Cat-Slug sets the violence raging anew. The Cat-Slugs, alas, like it best when everyone else is more miserable than they. Deep down, they are not convinced that the other creatures of Worm-World exist for any reason other than to amuse them.

• • • •

And then there are the Desolate Worlds, which have never birthed any thinking creatures. Some have never birthed any kind of life at all, and are made only of vast expanses of rock, or desert dunes, or gaseous clouds. Some have only evolved simple life forms driven purely by instinct.

But even in these empty places, there are Cats—Cats who travelled there from faraway galaxies to fulfil their sacred duty. For every world must have a Cat. This is a truth as old as the Universe itself.

On the gas-giant planet of Edopolar, there lives a solitary Cat known as the Great Floating One. As incorporeal as the planet itself, he floats serenely through the heavy atmosphere, bobbing through the storms that eddy through the planet. On rare occasion, diamonds form in the atmosphere and rain into the planet’s core, where they disintegrate in the heat. Only then does the Great Floating One stir from his rest, for it is his fondest pleasure to chase bright and shiny things.

• • • •

Once every thousand years, when the Universe rings with the music of the spheres and the astral planes align for one splendid moment, we hold a Magnificent Convergence. One world is chosen as the honored meeting place, and for one night, we Cats gather from across the Universe.

It is a night of wonder, of joy, and of harmony. We sing together with our hundred billion voices, lifting our song into the cosmos. We dance a wild dance that leaves tiny, helpless things trampled underpaw. We tell stories of heroism and of treachery, of the rise and fall of civilizations, of constellations and supernovas and the boundaries of time.

I pity you and your kind—you odd creatures who can think and dream and reason, and yet are not Cats. You slept deeply last night, a sweet unbreakable slumber, so unaware of the glorious events unfolding in your own world.

Now you are smiling and cooing and taking pictures of me with your device. It is clear that the profound words I spoke to you were not understood. No matter. Some things are simply beyond your ken. The Magnificent Convergence is over, and it is time for me to return to my world. Goodbye; our paths will not cross again.

©2024 by Megan Chee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Megan Chee has lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, and is currently based in Singapore. Her speculative short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Nature Futures, Cast of Wonders, and other venues. Her work has been translated into Chinese in Science Fiction World, and will appear in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol.3 (Pyr Books). You can find her online at meganchee.carrd.co or @meganflchee.

In the Hands of the Mountain God

Deborah L. Davitt | 5441 words

The towering granite shoulders of the mountain god braced against the blue heavens above. Eero’s eyes remained closed beneath his glacial mask, his body swathed in a cloak of green trees. Halfway up the mountain’s body, jutting out of a gray cliff, stretched his wide, verdigrised hands. Between them, glimmering in the dawn, lay a line of white fire—the Bridge of Novices.

“All who wish to become a Voice of Eero must cross the bridge,” the master of novices called, pointing up. “It is the final stage of your novitiate, and the passage to becoming a master.”

His lined face was calm, his eyes serene. “What was it like when you crossed?” Sennu called softly from the back of the assembled novices. She rarely spoke, so the other novices turned to regard her with surprise.

A frown crinkled his eyelids, but his expression didn’t otherwise alter. “It is different for each person,” the master replied slowly. “What you bring to the mountain will inextricably bind itself to the challenges you face. My journey is not yours. And I still progress along my journey every day.”

As answers went, Sennu did not believe that this answered anything at all. She’d encountered so much double-talk and sophistry among the Voices of Eero that some days, she despaired of ever achieving her goal.

Weary in her soul, Sennu listened to her fellow novices as they went about their days—from ablutions to meditation, from tilling the gardens to tending the alchemy stills, and from writing in the scriptorium to singing in chorale before rest.

“It’s a leap of faith,” Asa whispered in the scriptorium. “To cross the bridge is to put your life in the hands of Eero. You have to have faith, Sennu. In something beyond yourself.”

Sennu regarded her companion stolidly across the scraped expanse of a palimpsest. Not for her, the creamy vellum that the monks had entrusted to Asa—Sennu had never written in southern runes before arriving at the monastery. “Do you mean to chide me?” she asked the younger woman, pushing strands of lightly-silvered dark hair out of her own face. Among her own people, a youngster like Asa would never have dared to question an elder as this girl had just done.

Asa flushed, ducking her head so that her long blond hair covered her features. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound rude. I just—it’s what I think the test is.” Her eyes filled with a kind of adoration as she stared out the wide casements that let so much light flood into the scriptorium—casements made of rich, clear glass, not horn. The windows gave the scribes a spectacular view of the mountain, and of Eero’s sleeping face beneath his snows. “To give yourself utterly to something. Without hesitation or reservation. To trust.”

Sennu exhaled and picked up a goose-feather quill to resume her laborious copying of a recipe for a chest-salve for ague.

The monks would never come out and say what the final tests were. They’d only repeat, over and over: “Everyone’s journey is their own. We cannot teach you what cannot be taught. You must find your own way to Eero, out of your own experiences, out of your own learning. Our way may not be your way.”

Sometimes Sennu wondered if the whole thing was a sham. An elaborate façade, concealing the fact that there was no god here. That Eero, if he’d ever existed, had died long ago. Just as the gods of her people had died. Along with all her people, when the sickness rose from beneath the melting tundra, leaving only Sennu behind to inter the bodies, one by one, in the loose scree overlooking a fjord.

Her people held that there were two souls in every human—a free-soul, immortal and true. And a body-soul, bound to the earth. She’d hoped—oh, how she’d hoped—that the free-souls would find their way into the afterlife, where there was no more pain or grief. And that the body-souls that remained behind would at least have a good view of the gleaming ocean for all eternity.

Now, memories welled up in spite of her taut control. Memories of how intolerably loose her mother Ibbá’s arms had been as Sennu had wrapped her in a colorful blanket to drag her along the cliff path to join the others. How she’d had to stop and rewind the blanket two, three times, as the fabric refused to stay woven tight around the corpse. How she’d had to look at her mother’s face every time.

Of how small her son Lávrrohas’ fingers had been, as he clutched at his wooden reindeer in the throes of the fever . . . of how light his little body had seemed, as if the fever had burned all the substance out of his body.

Of how her dear Veaiku had fought just to stand up, to help her with the sick, before her strong husband, too, had died—Veaiku, who could track caribou all day in deep snow, who could carry a deer home on his shoulders, and still have energy to lift Lávrrohas into the air to watch the boy laugh in glee as he raised his little hands to the sky . . . all of them, gone . . . and only her left at the edge of the cliffs to scream and scream and scream to the uncaring waves and the startled sea-birds—

“Sennu?” Asa’s light voice broke through her reverie. “Are you all right?”

Sennu looked down and realized that she’d snapped the goose-feather quill in her clenched fist, spattering ink everywhere over the recipe. A recipe I gave these monks, recited dully out loud from memory. It didn’t help the fever. It didn’t help the chills. It didn’t prevent the dying. But still they want it recorded in their runes. “I suppose this means I’m starting over again,” Sennu replied blankly, and went to fetch sand to dry the ink, and a bronze razor to scrape away her mess.

The palimpsest, rough and now clean of ink, mocked her. Just as the tumbled rocks of the cliff-edge had. If you didn’t know what the scree hid, you couldn’t have seen that the rocks covered eighteen of her closest kin.

The bodies, like her failed runes, might as well never have been there.

Asa gave her a hapless look and a gentle pat on the shoulder. “You know, if you ever want to talk, I’m told I’m a good listener,” she offered.

Sennu accorded her a restrained nod, and went back to her work. Asa didn’t listen. Asa already believed that she had all the answers.

The young usually thought that they did.

And Sennu didn’t believe that any of the people in the monastery held the answers she sought. Asa believed that the key to the trials was faith, but . . . hadn’t Sennu and her tribe had faith in their gods? The gods didn’t answer our prayers, though we’d always known that they help those who help themselves. But we worked. We stayed up all night, bathing the ill. Giving them medicines. Holding their hands as they died. Didn’t we do enough? Why did all my people die? Why was I spared? Did our gods die with us? Were they already dead? Or did they just not care?

The rage in her couldn’t be quenched. Couldn’t be soothed by any amount of meditation. The only thing that quieted it, even for a moment, was the thought of meeting Eero. He might not be one of her gods—he wasn’t accountable for what had happened to her people. But he was a god. He might have answers for her. An answer for the terrible whys that burned in her heart and soul.

The only way to conceal her grief, her rage, her guilt, her despair, was not to speak of it. She was fairly sure that the monks wouldn’t let someone with so much turmoil in her heart ascend the mountain, so she remained silent, and buried her feelings as she had buried the bodies. Under rocks, in her mind, gray on one side, green with moss on the other. Stone after stone. A cairn as high as the mountain above, but infinitely more slippery and dangerous.

Every day, it threatened to collapse in her mind and bury her, as well.

Months passed, and the seasons flowed into summer. In the gardens, she toiled in the sun beside Kjell. He was an older acolyte than Asa, with the wide arms of a warrior of these southerners. His hands bore callouses from iron swords and ash spears, and he sometimes spoke of days in the long-ships, guarding merchants and their cargo as they plied waterways far to the east.

Sennu didn’t mind Kjell’s company. His stories set mortar to the slippery cairn stones in her mind. She didn’t have to work so hard not to think of her own past, when she had someone else’s to hear. So she knelt among the furrows, tugging at stubborn weeds and feeling the thorns bite into her flesh, and finally asked, “What do you think the final test really is?” She glanced up, her eyes catching on the thin span of white fire spread between the mountain’s hands.

Kjell followed her gaze and paused in his work, leaning on a hoe. “It’s a metaphor,” he replied gruffly. “The bridge was made by men in ages past. It’s no thing of magic. The hands are cast bronze, fastened by long nails into the naked rock. The bridge itself? Seven span of glass, suspended between the hands. You have to hike the trail up to the bridge, and then cross something that looks as if it will break if a butterfly lands on it, without losing nerve.” He shrugged.

This sounded far more concrete and real than Asa’s talk of faith and belief. And yet, if the bridge and its test were solely a thing of men and craft, then where was the god in all this? Sennu frowned, and continued rooting in the fresh-turned earth, inhaling its clean-musty smell.

“Why are you here?” Kjell asked, returning to his work, loosening the soil so that a third acolyte could bring a clay jar of water and dampen the soil around each seedling. “Your people have their own gods, don’t they?”

Aye. But they’re dead. Sennu’s teeth clamped tight on the words as she felt the cairn inside her mind teeter. Then she managed a quick, false smile and replied, “I might ask you the same thing, man of the sea! Why turn your back on sail and sword for some mountain god?”

Kjell turned and stared up at Eero’s sleeping face. She could see scars on his cheeks, faint and white, in the sunlight shining down from above. “Comes a time when you’re older and slower than the rest of the men on the boats,” he finally replied, his words slow and subdued. “I might have more experience, and I can out-guile most of the young’uns still, but I got to wondering if there was something more that I might be meant for.”

Sennu couldn’t think of any reply. Her own experience held no boats, no swords, no thoughts of being meant for something else. There had just been her people and the daily struggle for survival. They’d followed reindeer herds into the lands of white nights in summer, returning only when endless day turned to the unending night of winter.

And looking at the mountain god’s face, Sennu didn’t think either Asa or Kjell had the right of it. The test had to be more than mere belief—what god would find that an adequate sacrifice? Hers hadn’t. She and her people had believed, and her kin had all died. And the test couldn’t just be overcoming something that men had made. How could men know the measure of a god?

You have to earn worthiness, Sennu thought one night, her head spinning with exhaustion. There has to be sacrifice, yes, but you also have to prove yourself. You can’t do that by simple blind trust, or overcoming the works of men. You have to defeat the mountain. You have to defeat the god himself on his own terms.

And having realized that, she knew what she needed to do.

So while continuing her lessons in reading and writing, recording in southern runes the lore of her northern people, she also trained her body. Her arms were already tough from holding taut reindeer sleigh reins; her legs already powerful from long days on skis, following herds of caribou with Veaiku, spear in hand. But now she taught her fingers to find creases in stone, her toes to find furrows in cliff faces.

It couldn’t be harder to climb a mountain than to keep the cairn stones in her head from toppling, could it?

Her fellow novices thought her mad. “Sennu, you must place your trust in something beyond yourself,” Asa warned. “Else Eero will never accept you.”

But the master of novices and the other monks didn’t warn or give lessons. They learned what each novice had to offer, writing down Kjell’s tales of merchants and raids to the east. Asa’s stories of life in an eorl’s court. Sennu’s halting words of following the herds, hunting, and healing. And they taught in turn—but their lessons were in how to do things. How to clear a mind and meditate. How to write the runes that recorded the stories. How to prepare and distill herbs in alembics.

Never did the monks actually speak of Eero. Of what the god expected or wanted from his would-be acolytes.

Are we supposed to discover all of it for ourselves? Seenu wondered half-resentfully as she continued in her secret quest to shape her body, to prepare herself for the climb. It doesn’t matter. If it kills me, so be it. But I’ll have a god to call on. To demand answers of, if there are any to be had.

On morning of the autumn equinox, the master of novices gave them white robes and told them they could take one item with them to the mountain. “Choose carefully,” he said, his eyes distant and placid. “What you bring with you says much about you. And may determine the path of your trials.”

Asa took a book of prayers. Sennu had expected nothing less of the eorl’s daughter, with her wide eyes and peaceful smile.

Kjell, after some hesitation, armed himself with a long knife. “I’d rather a spear, if there are honey-drinkers up there,” he grumbled. “But there are no other weapons than this seax.” His expression suggested that the knife looked wholly inadequate to him.

“Trust in Eero!” Asa reminded him cheerfully. “The god will surely not send a bear to be your test.”

Sennu glanced at the master of the novices. What we choose to bring with us will determine the path of our trials? What if that isn’t a metaphor? What if bringing a weapon determines that a bear really will attack you?

In her mind, the cairn of stones teetered, threatening to reveal some beloved face or another. Intolerably decayed by now, of course. Worse yet, the thought that some fox or bear had dug up the cairn and devoured the bodies there. Lávrrohas’ little fingers—how she’d paused before covering them with the last rock. Staring at them. Hoping that they’d move. That he’d call out from under the stones, “No, Mama, no, don’t cover me, I was just sleeping—”

She fought the memory down, breathing hard. Which was when a final terrible thought hit her: What if it is a metaphor? And what we bring with us isn’t anything physical, but all the burdens we carry? Our memories, our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes?

She exhaled, staring up at the mountain. All right, Eero, you bastard, she thought tiredly. It’s too late to back out. Either you’ll find me worthy, or you won’t. But I won’t take the easy path. Or else I won’t find myself worthy, either.

She took a rope.

Her fellow novices began the long hike up the trail ahead of her, Asa laughing in the warm sun, Kjell watching the sides of the trail for bears. She watched them start up the path, pale gold where the rough dirt cut between the trees. It would circle and circle, ascending higher with each turn around the god’s body. The monks had murmured something about the ascent being meditative, when done properly.

Sennu couldn’t grasp that for the life of her. But she also knew that the path looked like a trap. Walk your own road, she thought, and began to climb, eschewing the open trail before her. She set toes to stone and hands to roots, and all her practice, honing body and muscles, paid off. And to be safe, she tied herself off here and there before swinging to another ledge, another boulder. At first, it almost felt easy.

At noon, halfway up the cliff that was the god’s belly, she heard a scream—high-pitched and female. Sennu flinched and pressed herself to the rock, trying to protect herself as tiny rocks clattered down, hailing on her head and shoulders.

And watched as a dark, flailing shape fell from above.

Watched it plummet past her, with a sound like a bird’s wings tearing at the air.

She locked eyes with Asa as the girl fell past. No fear left in Asa’s eyes. Only a kind of peace.

Sennu tore her eyes away, hating herself for not being able to bear witness for the girl, who’d seemed kind, if heedless. To be with Asa if only in spirit, as she died.

In her mind, the cairn creaked, and rocks toppled from its sides as she pressed her face against Eero’s stony flank. Inhale. Exhale. Feeling her muscles quiver in exhaustion. Feeling the sun beating against her back. Still alive. Her fall didn’t take you with it. Damn it, look down. Stand vigil to her life, to her death!

When Sennu managed to berate herself into looking down, no broken body littered the rocks below. But a white dove rose into the air, soaring away. Sennu’s eyes widened, and her breath caught hard under her ribs.

The ascent came harder after that. She watched the glass bridge grow larger as she climbed; set it as her goal. Pulled parallel with the great bronze hands, larger than she was—larger than Veaiku had been. How Lávrrohas would have loved to have seen this, she thought, clinging to the rock, her eyes wide as she stared at the glass span suspended between the hands. There, the end of the dirt trail, a hint of golden dust spilling onto the glass. The glass itself? Two feet thick. It shimmered like ice, but it had caught all the glory of the sunset in its heart, blazing with golden light so bright, she could barely look on it.

And for once, her heart didn’t entirely ache as she thought of her son. How wide his dark eyes would have been as he looked on this impossible treasure, this immeasurable wealth, held securely in the hands of the mountain god. A testament to human faith, to human ingenuity? Yes—she could see the metal staples that held the hands to the rockface.

And yet, because it was a thing made by human hands—no matter how glorious or beautiful—she shied away from the thought of touching it. Of crossing it. This is not my path, Sennu thought dizzily, and continued to climb. The monks said that my path might not be their path. Let it be so. Let my path be my own, of my own choosing . . . .

As she reached a ledge some twenty feet above the bridge, another scream. This one the more terrible for being male—and distorted. Strange. Feral.

Sennu twisted around, toes cramping dangerously, and looked down to see a bear racing across the glass.

A bear as blond as Kjell had been.

It paused at the edge of the glass bridge, looking up at her. Sniffing. She could see scars on its wide cheeks, white against its blond fur.

And then it dropped to all fours and lumbered down the trail, and off into the green cloak of trees that covered Eero’s shoulders.

Why? Sennu thought, a fresh wave of despair churning through her. Her belly was empty. Her hands shook. Why was Kjell found wanting? He was a good man!

She put her face against the cold stone, feeling grit stick to her face with her sweat. “Another question I’ll have for you, when I finish this ascent, mountain god,” Sennu said out loud.

Her defiance sounded thin and feeble against the face of the coming night.

So she climbed on. Muscles knotting. Flesh sweating. Fingers bleeding.

Somehow, the very act of climbing became meditation. Became prayer. Her bleeding fingers found new purchase. Her mind became clearer, more in the moment. Nothing left but the next handhold, and the next.

And somehow, she could always see the next handhold. Even though night had swept in to replace twilight, she always knew where to shift her weight, and when to lunge for the next ledge. Somewhere behind her, her rope swung in the breeze, knotted to a ledge, but abandoned.

When her hands reached ice, and not stone, Sennu wept, her tears freezing to her face in the icy wind. She couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, and she knew rationally that between the cuts in her gloves that exposed her skin, and the blood that had slicked them, that she must be in danger of frostbite, or worse.

And yet, how could she stop now? She’d ascended so far that to retreat now was just as dangerous as continuing to climb.

And so she continued, inch by perilous inch. Whispering under her ragged breath, “This is my sacrifice. My body. My blood. My effort. My skill. All of me.” She hauled herself over the final edge and lay atop the ice, panting. “Take what you want, god of the mountains. And give what you will, in return.”

She managed to stand, her legs unsteady, the wind tearing at her. It would be smarter to take a knee, to tuck her body into a tight knot against the forceful hands of the wind, but Sennu refused.

Before her, as the dawn’s first light stained the eastern horizon with salmon and gold, lay the wide, white face of the glacier that masked Eero’s face. She knew how dangerous glaciers were. Knew that wind-drifted snow might conceal crevasses into which an unwary step could plunge her. Knew that the wind that moaned over the empty expanse before her could shove her into such a crack, and that even if the fall didn’t kill her, she wouldn’t have the strength to climb back out of the abyss once more.

“Is this it?” Sennu asked out loud. “Is this all there is?” She turned her back to the mountain, staring at the green world of the valley far below. “Why did I climb all this way, if there’s nothing here!”

“That’s a good question,” a voice replied from behind her.

Sennu spun, and the wind caught her off-balance. Shoved her towards the edge. She reached out a hand, flailing—

—and found her hand clasped firmly. Drawn on, pulled to stand before a man who surely hadn’t been there a moment before, his form a dark shadow against the blaze of dawn behind him.

Her first dazed impression was that he was tall. Impossibly so. He bulked even larger, wrapped as he was in bearskins. But his face was weathered, with ice and snow caught in his bushy eyebrows and bristling beard. But she recognized his face, having seen it through the casements of the monastery every day for months—though the god’s eyes were open now as Eero peered at her. “So. You made it.”

As pronouncements went, it lacked grandeur. He sounded gruff, but she heard a certain sympathy in his tone. And for a moment, Sennu couldn’t respond at all, her breath taken from her in a mix of awe and terror.

But after that moment passed, all her guilt and rage returned. Demanded expression. Became a lash for him, who’d saved her. “My friends. Asa and Kjell.” Sennu began in a whisper, her voice growing louder with each word. “They believed. Why didn’t you help them?”

“Were they your friends?” The god sounded detached. “You didn’t walk beside them.”

The world around her closed in, the periphery of her vision going gray. His tone didn’t condemn her. But she condemned herself. “They said . . . to walk our own paths . . . .” Sennu’s throat constricted. “Could I have saved them, if I’d walked with them?”

Eero released her hand, and gestured for her to walk with him. His strides were so long, she had to scramble to keep up, but where his feet fell, there were no cracks in the ice. “No. You could not have saved them. Any more than you could have saved your kin. Their paths were their own. But you could have shared them.”

“So they were fated to fall?” Her heart pounded. And my people were fated to die?

“No. Their choices along the path led to their falls.”

“But they believed—”

“Yes, they believed.” He paused. “But what they believed most in, they found.”

Sennu closed her eyes in realization. “Kjell believed in the real. In the dangers of the world, his own strength.” As I have believed in my own strength and skill. “He looked for bears.”

“And became what he most believed in.” The god’s voice held compassion.

“And Asa?”

“She believed that faith would transform her. It did. She did not die from her fall.”

“You gave her wings.”

“She gave herself wings.” A pause. “What do you believe in, Sennu?”

She opened her eyes. Confronted with him, her answer sounded facile, her voice thin as a thread. “Myself.”

“As well you should. I cannot make more of you, than you have yourself.” Eero paused. “Is that all you believe in?” His voice shifted, becoming oddly sad.

Behind her eyes, she saw Veaiku’s face, stained gold by firelight as he worked warm wax onto sleigh runners. Smiling, because he’d just looked down at Lávrrohas, who’d been hiding under the upturned sleigh, and now peeked out at his father, laughing. I’m a bear, grrr!

And for once, the cairn stones piled high in her mind didn’t shift. Didn’t threaten her with the sight of them, cold and still against the earth.

“I used to believe in them,” Sennu whispered. “They were my life.”

“And so you came to ask if there was a reason they were taken from you.” Eero stopped in his long strides. The god turned to face her, placing a hand on her shoulder. Warmth radiated from that touch. “I don’t have an answer for you. That’s why the journey is yours, the path is yours. There are no answers but the ones we find for ourselves.”

Sennu looked down. “I really couldn’t have saved them any more than I could have stopped Asa from falling?”

“You misunderstand. You could’ve saved Asa from falling—once, twice perhaps. But her faith was such that she would take no sensible precautions. Her choices determined her steps. If she didn’t fall on my slopes, she would’ve fallen another time, another way. Because that was who she was, and who she chose to be.”

Sennu’s eyes rose again. “So my people . . . were condemned to death because of our choices? Because we were who we were, and went where we had always gone?” It’s not fair, she thought, feeling like a child. It’s not right!

“There is no condemnation,” Eero replied softly, his warmth still spreading through her. “There are just consequences. And sometimes there is chance—yes, chance, not fate.”

She lowered her head. “What do I do now?” She felt bereft, her anger draining from her like fluids from a lanced wound. The poison of it lingered a little, but it no longer sustained her. She’d come looking for answers, ready to demand them, but there were none. At least, not easy ones.

Eero shrugged. “That, like every other step along the path, is your decision to make.” He raised his free hand, and she followed his gesture with her gaze . . . only to realize that there was a crumpled form on the ice behind her. Long, dark hair, silvered throughout. A thin robe covered pale skin—foolish, not to have worn the bright-dyed, thick wool and leathers of her people when ascending to the snowline . . . .

And then the jolt of recognition. “Am I dying, or am I already dead?”

And if I’m dead, can my free-soul finally go to Veaiku and Lávrrohas?

“Is that what you’ve been seeking, young one?” Eero’s voice neither condemned nor approved. He merely questioned her unspoken thoughts. “Have you sought me as a means to your own end?”

Sennu swayed in place. “No,” she finally answered, her voice thick. “I don’t wish to die. I love them. I want them to live once more.”

“I cannot make them live. Nor can you.” He paused. “But you can decide to live. Transform your heart, and let the pain go. It will always be a part of you, of course. As they will always be part of you. But you can decide to live. And how.”

She exhaled. Strange, that her free-soul could still breathe the thin, flinty mountain air. Could still smell the tang of snow in the air. “Decide how to live?”

Eero smiled faintly. “Certainly. You could return. Force yourself into that cold, broken body, and descend the mountain as my Voice. You could walk the plains. Teach others what you already knew. That the gods help those who help themselves. And perhaps, in time, other truths that you’ll learn for yourself.” He looked away, toward the horizon, his face distant and his eyes sad.

“Have many chosen to become your Voice?” She thought of the monks in the monastery below.

“The monks below are those who cross the bridge, but go no further. They might think of themselves as my Voices, but none have made the full ascent and returned since the bridge was built, hundreds of years ago.”

She thought of all her people, dead of plague, because their gods hadn’t been strong enough. Because they hadn’t the knowledge to help themselves. Because chance existed. “What’s the alternative?”

She thought a hint of a smile crossed his face, but his eyes remained sorrowful. As if he already knew her decision. “You open yourself to possibility. Walk with me. And become what I am.” He swept his hand encompassingly, gesturing to the granite crags of his body, the trees that cloaked his form, the snows that masked his face. “But no matter which you choose, choose it with a heart that has the capacity to heal. With a soul that can forgive itself for the sin of survival.”

She looked down at the mountain, and for the first time, realized how strange it was, that there were no others in the vicinity. No great ranges, nothing else larger than a hill. “How many have come so far?” she asked softly,

“Two,” he replied, sounding melancholy. “Two in all the thousands of years your kind have walked these lands.”

She stepped closer. “And how many have gone back, leaving you alone here?”

“All of them,” Eero replied, his voice like frost dissolving under the sun’s first light.

Sennu closed her eyes, and took his hand once more. “I choose you,” she whispered. “I cannot bid my family to live again. I don’t wish to join them—not yet, anyway. But I do not wish to be alone. Nor should you be.”

The mountain god looked at her with wide, startled eyes, and smiled.

And when the sun set on the monastery that day, two mountains stood, one on either side of the valley. One eternally masked in ice, stern and forbidding and weathered. The other? A little less tall, perhaps, more subtly rounded.

But on her flanks, wildflowers grew, with the promise that winter inevitably yields to spring.

©2024 by Deborah L. Davitt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. Her award-winning poetry and prose has appeared in over seventy journals, including F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, and Lightspeed. For more about her work, including her Elgin-nominated poetry collections, The Gates of Never and Bounded by Eternity, and her chapbook, From Voyages Unreturning, see deborahldavitt.com. For her podcast, see youtube.com/@ShiningMoonSpeculativeFiction.

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

The Weight of Salt

Shanna Germain | 1145 words

We’ve never been so busy.

The cave where we work used to be calm and, if not entirely devoid of sound, then split only by the crash of waves at high tide and the occasional cry of a woman who didn’t listen when we said listen this will hurt this will hurt this will hurt. Or maybe she did listen, but she thought we meant physical pain, when what we meant was your heart your heart your heart.

Now they are lined up outside the small entrance—not so small that even the late ones can’t slip through—but small enough that it is overlooked by those who do not recognize the tiny things, like sand and salt and nuance. They are lined up and their fear smells like the sea gone wrong and their panic is the silence of the drowned. They know to pretend they are here for the beach, the bodies buried in the sand, the sting of the jellyfish, the selection of stones for their pockets, anything but this. They talk about the weather and the waves, the shells upon the shore and the distance you can swim before drowning, but not about why they’re here. That’s obvious in the eclipses beneath their eyes, in the low exhales, in the rising swell of their bellies.

Before this year, we thought we were dying out. We were dying out. Who needed slippery-skin tales of shifting shore beings when they had sterile rooms and bright lights and drugs that sat in the gut like stones. Yes, we saw their hospitals, their doctors, their laws. We helped them way back, when salt made this cave sterile and the sun was light and drugs were algae and foraminifera, bitter and ground. We watched them recede from us, disbelieve in us, scorn us as some came to us still, in secret and silence.

We aren’t like gods. We don’t need their belief to stay present. But we do need their need. Without need, what are we but specks floating aimlessly in the sea? This is what we’ve been asking ourselves all these years. And we’ve been divided, true. Some went back to our beginnings. Others, like those of us in this cave and other secret pockets around the world, stayed. We have been alive a long time, and we know that need ebbs but it never truly disappears.

This one who needs us now is tender, so tender and furious and loud. Even walking in, she wails, a siren-song bouncing from wall to wall to wall and diving, finally, into the water below. We are not the ones hurting her body or her heart—that was before us, that is always before us—but the pain comes out here because it is safe and because those who come to us are worn down to their last layer of skin, their armor gone, their bodies laid trembling and bare before us. She asked for her friend in here with her, but we explained they couldn’t enter. Not because we want her to be alone—never that, alone is the worst, alone is how they get themselves into trouble again and again—but because we need her to need. That’s how the magic works.

We lay her down upon the stone, worn smooth and flat from use. We talk to her through the shells and the hag stones and the wind-whistled places in between.

It will only take a moment, we murmur, and we don’t know if that’s entirely true but we know it helps to hear it. What is time for creatures of the sea? The ebb and flow of nations, laws, rules, customs. We have seen them all. We remember them all. Listen this will hurt.

“I know,” she says, and we know she knows about hurt. We can see it in her tremble, in her wide eyes, in the stones she carries in the pockets of her heart.

We will do our best.

“I know,” she says again, and we know she’s heard that before, in better circumstances and worse. But she has come all the way here, listened to her gut, hid her travels, walked alone into this cave where nothing lives. So many never make it.

We begin.

Our magic, whatever you may have heard, is not kind or easy. It is teeth and tear, it is hard to look at and harder to hear. It is not her fault, and it is she who bears the brunt. Because that is the way it’s always been, and we can do many things, can change many things, but we cannot change that. Through it all, she does not turn away. Most of them don’t these days, and that, too, is a sea change. When the monsters of the myths are your saviors and your last resort and your worst nightmare and still you don’t blink or slam shut your eyes and turn away from what you’ve heard is magic and in truth is just a spell made of hunger and heartbreak.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think you were real,” she gasps between bouts of salt and swearing. We are done, but she doesn’t know it yet. To be a creature of blood and bone is to be disembodied sometimes. There is no helping it.

We have always been here. We will always be here. Tell the others.

“I will. I promise.”

We let her rest and then help her rise with apologies for the rush. We have never been so busy, we are sorry, there are so many.

So many things have left her now, but not her fury, not her ire, not her heart, coiled and beating fierce inside its shell. “I’m going to be a nurse,” she says as she pulls her coat around her. “And help people. Just like you.”

And we wonder, again, at the cycle from monster, murderer, nightmare to protector, hero, safekeeper. We wonder again at the rhythms of the moon and tide, of men and monsters, of how stones turn to sand turn to salt turn to sea. We remember being young, fearless, and afraid—always. We remember why we went to the caves and the crevices, grew tooth and claw, carved gills into our throats and taught ourselves to descend.

Before she goes, she kneels at the door, pulls every stone from her coat pockets, the big and small, the smooth and jagged, the holed and whole. She builds a small pile next to all the many other piles. She whispers a name to it, secret and silent.

The sea will come for it someday, just as it comes for us all. But not yet. Not yet.

For now, we stand firm. We ebb and flow. We rid ourselves of that which would pull us under.

We sink.

We rise.

We remember.

©2024 by Shanna Germain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shanna Germain is an award-winning writer, editor, and game designer and the co-founder of Monte Cook Games. Over the years, she’s published hundreds of poems, essays, short stories, novellas, novels, games, articles and more. She’s also taught classes in writing, publishing, media, and photography at a wide variety of places. Her recent works include Predation, The Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game, Tomorrow’s Bones, We are All Mad Here, and The Lure of Dangerous Women. She lives in a pocket rainforest with a dog named &. Follow her down the rabbit hole at shannagermain.com.

EXCERPT: Androne (47North)

Dwain Worrell | 2260 words

Humanity’s new war is an enigma, with an enemy threat beyond all imagination, in this near-future novel of mind-blowing adventure where the fate of the world rests in the choices of one ordinary soldier.

In one terrifying event called the Ninety-Nine, all major military installations on earth were eviscerated. But by whom? Foreign powers, AIs, ETs? Every conceivable adversary was ruled out. Reeling from massive casualties and amid hundreds of conspiracy theories, humanity creates Andrones: bipedal android drones piloted remotely by soldiers who will never again need to be on the field of battle. Newly minted Androne pilot Sergeant Paxton Arés has now been deployed into a fight against an enemy no one understands or has ever seen.

Passing mostly uneventful days patrolling an unidentified desert, Paxton spends time communicating with his pregnant girlfriend back home and reflecting on his impending fatherhood. But as he is drawn deeper into military camaraderie and begins quickly rising up the ranks on the strength of his father’s military legacy, Paxton starts to question the swirling rumors about the nature of the conflict. What he’s encountered in the shifting dunes—something inexplicable, indomitable—fills him with the fear that whatever is out there is destined to win.

Whether it’s curiosity, ambition, or a newfound paternal instinct, Paxton has a driving need to understand the dangerous truths of this strange, invisible war. And the choices he must make have the power to change everything.

Androne is available now from 47North; the sequel, Alliance, is available June 11.

CHAPTER 4

Her office had a library: four shelves against the four walls in a rectangular room. The shelves bulged with books, everything from military history to quantum theory to the scrawny fantasy novellas in between. On her desk—nothing. Bare-naked mahogany gleamed in the noonlight beaming down from a skylight above.

Yet even with the desk, matching mahogany shelves, and reclining swivel chairs, her office sprawled to spacious lengths; vased ferns breathed green into the office flanks, and oriental lamps shone down on framed Hebrew calligraphy. The decor all seemed to have a symmetry about it, balanced around the four corners of the room. The floor and windowpanes gleamed as if freshly polished, and the entire room seemed to sparkle.

“Nice office,” Paxton said, and waited for a response.

And she kept him waiting, never coming forth with a response. She may have actually nodded, maybe, but it was so slight that he couldn’t tell. She had been sending and receiving texts since they got to her office and hadn’t spoken a word. But after Paxton voiced his compliment, she seemed to remember that he was there. She multitasked, a cell phone in one hand and the other reaching deep into the drawer by her feet. She lifted a single sheet of paper from inside. Paxton’s information—those same lines of legal dialect from the morning before.

“Have you ever piloted Furies?” she asked with that accent that he couldn’t place. “The aerial drones?”

“No, ma’am,” he said.

“So, landrones only?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paxton said. “Rovers mostly.”

“K9s,” she said.

“K9s?”

“We called them K9s in Israel,” she said, and that explained a lot. First, why she would use the term K9 and second, it explained that accent. “But you’ve never piloted a bipedal—an Androne?”

Androne. That word again—was it a thing now? A year ago in San Diego and Fort Irwin the term didn’t exist. Even as the use of the bipedal drones had become the new standard, pilots called them bipedals or landrones. At first Paxton had thought maybe the term Androne originated by subtracting the l from landrone, but now he realized the words androidplus drone would equal out to Androne. He debated with himself for half a second longer than he should have and nearly lost sight of what he was talking about in the first place.

“I’ve piloted an Androne in simulation.”

“Sim.” She sounded disappointed.

Lieutenant Victoria reached back to the bookshelf and pulled a thick white book from between two other fat thousand-page binders. Paxton felt the weight of it as she handed it to him. Bipedals: The Androne Series. Paxton quickly flipped it open to a random page to feign interest. He saw two separate blueprints on either page, one of a Shogun Series Androne and the other an Apache Series.

He had to squint at the fine print naming all the individual parts. There were so many pieces. The Andrones were created in the human image—like gods with human proportions, optical lenses, synthetic spinal fluids, and metallic fibrous muscle.

The Shogun Series stood six feet plus and were armor heavy, with a tungsten carbide body and shifting tungsten alloys surrounding the joints—and faceless, except for a single cyclopic eye. The Apache Series appeared to be built for speed, a sprinter’s aerodynamic design, less armor, lighter guns, and a nearly empty face, except for its triceratops-fashioned optical lenses.

Paxton turned the page and found blueprints for two more Andrones, a fifth and sixth on the pages after. Each with a distinct look and function: combat, recon, extraction.

“How many?” Paxton asked.

“Eight series, or nine, depending on who you ask.”

“If I’m asking you?”

“I count nine.” She flashed nine fingers. “The Cooks name them after the greatest and most respected military war machines throughout history. The Spartan Series, the SPQR Series 1 and 2, the Mongol Series, Shogun, Apache, Z Series or Zulu Series, and the Kingsman Series.”

“What’s the ninth?” Paxton asked.

“The Americana,” she said. “But it’s not a series. They’re only making one.”

“Why one?”

“Because there’s only one God,” she said, and half smiled for the first time. “That’s what the Cooks tell us, at least. And they are right about one thing: it’s godlike in nature.”

Paxton thumbed through the subsequent pages. Detailed diagrams on antennae, satellite signals, and infinitely complex optical lenses filled the pages. Though what Paxton was searching for was a blueprint for the Americana.

“It’s not in there,” she said.

“What’s not?”

“You’re looking for the Americana?”

She had read his mind.

“They’re just in the conceptual phase right now—brainstorming: hurricanes and twisters. They won’t start any actual construction for another ten, fifteen years at least.”

“Gotcha,” Paxton said, and closed the book thereafter.

“You want to see them?”

Not right now. But she would show him anyway. Her body language alluded to it—the slope of her wrist, the tilt of her elbows. The lieutenant leaned forward and eyed the door before even finishing her sentence.

“There are prototypes here on base,” she said as she stood and moved toward the door. “This way.”

Paxton followed Victoria into the Mojave oven, lagging a few steps behind her enlivened haste. They cut through the field of solar arrays; the mile and a half of gleaming metals appeared like stalks of diamonds in the daylight. Barbed vegetation knotted the trail and somehow smuggled their thorns into his footwear. Paxton limped, as either pebbles or thorns or both rattled around his socks, making them into cotton maracas. At the top of the winding trail, they reached a deep-fried warehouse, rusted and corroded to perfection, crowning the ridge.

“Why me?” he said to himself. “Why just me?”

And he kept on wondering why the lieutenant would reveal every bell and whistle within the Androne Program a full day before orientation. He had expected Victoria to reveal this in her office, but no. Why wasn’t Bella here? Neither Solo nor Private Qamaits had any Androne training—why weren’t they on this grand tour? Or any of the 117 fresh recruits, now resting in the air-conditioned bunks—why weren’t they cresting this hill in the cutting late-morning sunshine?

Two pairs of patrol officers slouched on either side of the extra-crispy warehouse rust; cigarette fumes huffed from their nostrils, chewing tobacco sprayed from their gums. America’s finest guards hadn’t even noticed Paxton’s and the lieutenant’s bright uniforms moving against a palette of infinite desert grays; and they wouldn’t notice, not until Victoria whistled and threw up her hand to wave. The young men straightened their postures, dusting their sleeves and snuffing cigarette butts under their heels.

She flashed her badge, but they had already taken the locks off the barn doors and begun sliding them back. Complicated smells poured out: tarnish, motor fuels, battery acids, all singeing his nose hairs and seeping into his taste buds the deeper he journeyed inside.

The interior was black, and Lieutenant Victoria’s dark navy uniform dissolved in the void ahead. Paxton entered more cautiously, feeling in front of him and catching fistfuls of cobwebs.

“Watch your eyes.” Her voice echoed somewhere in the distance.

“What?” he said, and as he said it floodlights exploded into the darkness. He squinted into a fifty-some-odd high-wattage novae burning down from the ceiling. A massive space yawned out in front of him. A space large enough to host a 747. The words Hangar 18 were painted over large twin doors at the opposite end.

“Sergeant,” Victoria said and gestured. The wide, empty space splintered her voice into echoes, ricocheting from every direction. “The Andrones are over here.”

Their naked tungsten bodies glistened under the incandescent shine. Stainless steel joints twisted the luster into whirlpools of dazzle, the glare dizzying his eyes. The Andrones appeared godlike and at the same time ungodly, monstrous behemoths, with an unlimited capacity for destruction. Built in our image came to mind again, but not born from women—these were the children of Men.

“Shogun, SPQR Series 1, Apache, and Spartan,” Victoria said, pressing her palm against the Spartan’s reinforced-steel chest as if feeling for a heartbeat.

The Spartan in no way resembled its Greco-Mycenaean counterparts in fashion or design; it was modern, mechanical muscle, at least six feet, nine inches vertically and four feet broad, with built-in titanium body armor giving it a reflective grayish-brownish hue and wielding a Gatling gun–size assault rifle.

“Are they functional?” Paxton asked.

“All four. The Spartan was the first model. SPQR Series was the second version—”

“Chronologically,” he cut her off, thinking he understood. “Spartans are Greeks. SPQR is the Roman Empire, and the . . .”

She started shaking her head before he could finish.

“You would think so, but then they made the Apache before the Mongol, the Shogun before SPQR Series 2. Great engineers. Bad historians.”

“Where are the rest?” Paxton said, glancing around the room searching for the Mongol, Kingsman, and Z Series depicted in the book.

“They’re . . .” She hesitated with the answer. “Not too far out.”

Paxton rapped his knuckles against the chest of the armor-heavy Shogun. He ran his palms along the Spartan’s monstrous assault rifle. He prodded the hundred individual parts along the back: pistons in the arms and legs, a titanium-reinforced spine and the synthetic fluid therein; Paxton disassembled it all in his head, examining the individual parts and their functions, like he had the used cars at Larry’s mechanic shop back in Novato. But all of his poking and prodding was just a hesitation move—a buying of time, as Paxton waited for the lieutenant to address that one question swelling malignantly in his brain—Why me?

But a buzz from her cell phone dragged Victoria outside. Her voice faded, then disappeared, and Paxton could only stand and wait among the company of the Andrones. But a five-minute wait turned into ten, turned into twenty, and eventually a cigarette-wielding private came in her stead, relaying a message from the lieutenant.

“’Tenant said you should get back to camp.”

She left? he thought, then it echoed out of his lips: “She’s gone?”

“No, she’s ’round back, but—”

Paxton nodded as if the private were finished and treaded toward the doors just a skip short of jogging. Trails of kicked-up sand followed the soles of his shoes, and he found her curled up under a spot of shade, ending her phone call just as Paxton stepped within earshot of her voice.

“You should get back,” she said, standing under the barbed-wire shade of a cactus. “The colonel’s speech is about to start.”

“You do this for all one hundred seventeen of us?” Paxton asked. “The whole grand tour?”

“No,” she said with her eyes fixed on him as if bracing for the next question.

“Then why do it for me?”

“For you.” Lieutenant Victoria glanced back at the warehouse entrance dangling ajar in the breeze. “You feel special?”

“No,” he said.

“No, what?”

It took Paxton a second to remember his rank. “No, ma’am!” he said, straightening up and looking her in the eye. Maybe he was starting to think that he was special.

“Maybe you are,” she said, and shrugged. “Maybe you could make a difference.” And then as she stepped away, moving back the way they came, Victoria said, “Maybe you could end the war.”

Copyright © 2023 by Dwain Worrell. Excerpted from Androne by Dwain Worrell. Published by permission of the author. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dwain Worrell is a filmmaker, Chinese interpreter, and novelist. The Barbadian native now works as a film and television writer and producer in Los Angeles. His writing credits include Marvel’s Iron Fist, CBS’s Fire Country, and the Disney+ series National Treasure, among others. For more information please visit www.dwainworrell.com.

Book Review: We Mostly Come Out at Night edited by Rob Costello

Arley Sorg | 1536 words

We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures
Rob Costello, ed.
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9780762483198
Running Press Teens, May 21, 2024, 384 pgs

Back in 2020, Patrice Caldwell edited A Phoenix First Must Burn; before that came Nisi Shawl’s New Suns in 2019, and Grace Dillon’s Walking the Clouds in 2012. Even before these, Sheree Renée Thomas had Dark Matter in 2000. Each sought to highlight the kinds of voices that were marginalized, underrepresented, and misrepresented in mainstream genre fiction. Now there are far more of these anthologies, showcasing a strong range of storytellers and demographics, such as Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.; Magic Has No Borders: A Collection of Magical South Asian Tales edited by Sona Charaipotra and Samira Ahmed; and Africa Risen, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight.

But if you go to a bookstore or browse publisher catalogs, you will see that despite there being more inclusivity than twenty years ago, marginalization and misrepresentation are still ongoing issues. Moreover, the US is engaged in a literary civil war, where conservatives want to eliminate the possibility of meaningful inclusivity, utilizing censorship (book bans) as a weapon against Black authors and other authors of color, queer authors, trans authors, and more. For these reasons, I still seek out and am delighted to find new anthologies like We Mostly Come Out At Night, wherein queer people of various kinds can find stories that reflect their experiences. It’s an excellent book which offers fifteen original stories by a diverse set of authors, all of them skilled storytellers. I’ll highlight a few pieces as examples to whet your appetite!

“Bastian and the Beast” by Jonathan Lenore Kastin opens the book. In a fairly elegant writing style, the author sets the stage for this retelling, wherein a shaken father comes home with chests of gold, stating that the wealthy “Beast” wants “the youngest,” which in this case is seventeen-year-old Bastian. For his part, Bastian is actually curious, though sharp readers won’t miss the clever juxtapositions—a terrified father; excited brothers, too eager to be rid of their younger sibling for some gold. Kastin expertly lines immersive story with background details, letting the reader enjoy the setting, world, and mood while also developing a richer narrative. Kastin’s prose brilliantly embodies fairy tale narrative, and lures us into Bastian’s past, particularly with his mother, who tried—sometimes violently—to force Bastian to pretend to be a girl, never accepting that he is a boy. At the same time, it’s clear that the alluring “Beast” has his own issues with being seen, both with how others see him as well as how he sees himself. He poses no threat to Bastian, though, which is clear to Bastian from the moment they meet.

In fact, the heart of the matter here is really about how we see ourselves, particularly the impact that abuse and prejudice can have on one’s own self-image. It’s also about the need to find others who really see you. The core of the story may be swathed in a steamy fairy tale romance, but the central message is crucial: even if you are surrounded by jerks, there are others out in the world who will truly see you.

H.E. Edgmon lays the foundation of “Sons of Gods and Daughters of Humans” with a fair amount of well-written exposition. It works because it’s also grounded in character interest, and because there is a continual sense of a story in motion. We learn that Ana is an angel, one of many sent to participate in the Apocalypse, but Ana has fallen in love with a human named Noah. Worse than this—especially in the eyes of the Father—Noah is pregnant. But it was the very kindness of the people Ana met after their initial incarnation which made their feelings about humans change from “yes, let’s rip up this world!” to “wait . . . everyone? Even this adorable Noah guy?” At the outset of the narrative Edgmon also gives us a lot of juicy subtext about gender, the cruelty of religious dogma, community, and more, which adds to the enjoyment of the read. As the story shifts away from exposition, things become tense and layered and beautiful, despite the heavy topic at the heart of it all: do we need to abort this child. Ana and Noah have to navigate their relationship, that central question, and the elements of the Apocalypse, which includes demons and angels who might want to destroy them. At the heart of it all is an examination of truth, of belief, and the question: who are the actual monsters?

In “The Freedom of Feathers and Fur” by David Bowles a young Basque man named Lope has joined a Spanish expedition to subjugate territory in the “New World,” mainly so that he can find his brother Mikel and hurt him, as Mikel had wounded Lope before. From the beginning the story is told in a compelling voice. Lope contemplates his “depraved” sexual urges, as well as the terrible nature of conquest itself. Being Basque, he has experienced being the subject of conquest. But his anger at Mikel drives him, so he plays along. His sexuality isn’t the only thing he is denying; the clues are there from the beginning, and genre readers will easily guess at what’s going on, even before Lope meets an alluring young man named Ayim who tells him directly what he is. But the story is really about the journey of acceptance, as well as the ways that identity can be complex. In this journey, there is also the need to contend with the conquest of personality: the way one group of people will (o)press upon another their specific cultural norms, their beliefs, their ideas of what is “moral.” For Lope, this is the Catholics and Castillians, the people who taught him to despise his sexuality and his animal nature and more, and to supplant these aspects of himself with their versions of being “good”. The story brilliantly ties together the violence of physical conquest with the deeply rooted violence/conquest of conversion. Along the way, things get bloody. But things have always been bloody, whether Lope wanted to admit it or not. Lope’s journey is thought provoking, but it ends up being simply delightful, and despite pain and misery and the terrible things people do to each other, there is also wonder, and wonderful people. Ultimately, the journey is a joyful one.

“Other Fish” is a standout among standouts for me. With a few opening paragraphs author Alexandra Villasante digs into colorism, shifts in culture over time, systemic misogyny, and more. These lines establish history via lineage, but careful readers will delight in the promises the opening offers. A few lines more and somehow Villasante has established a character that readers can immediately like. Yes, this is a sea witch story—kind of—but the way Villasante opens the narrative, it could be aliens or cowgirls or nearly anything and I’d want to keep reading. Villasante also pulls you in with the sensory: the hot and cold, the visual; plus, the emotional touches, the stress of a character trying to do something important. Just when you think this is good the story switches tense, mood, scene, and like magic it works fantastically. Villasante has a wonderful voice, and paints a lovely scene of best friends, and a moment where that friendship just might slip into something else. It’s good fun and great storytelling. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes absorbing and funny, well-paced and intriguing, rich in subtext, all while still being utterly readable. Honestly, I love everything about this entry. I even, quite literally, laughed and cried, and what more could anyone ask a story to give them?

After each story is a “monster reflection” where the author shares something about themselves and being or feeling monstrous. These notes add depth and value to the stories, recontextualizing them. For some (like “Other Fish”) it makes the tale even more beautiful.

If you aren’t part of some marginalized group, you can still enjoy this book. Costello has gathered a great set of writers. If you are queer and have that sharp sense of Otherness, whether because you were the only Brown kid at your school or you just didn’t know anyone who saw gender the way you did or any number of other things, you’ll find stories written for you. In We Mostly Come Out At Night you’ll find kinship, joy, your experiences and fantasies finally coming to life in stories. And perhaps better than that, you’ll feel a sense of community and belonging.

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: Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

Aigner Loren Wilson | 461 words

Moon of the Turning Leaves
Waubgeshig Rice
Paperback / Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9780735281585
Random House Canada, October 2023, 320 pgs

Waubgeshig Rice’s follow up to Moon of the Crusted Snow, Moon of the Turning Leaves is a standalone novel set in the same post-apocalyptic world as the first. Moon of the Turning Leaves follows a similar tradition to the first novel and gives readers a look at a world where an Anishinaabe community works together to survive in a world that’s been dark for over a decade. A generation has been born since the first novel and is coming into their teen years. As the settlement, Zaag’igan, grows, the surrounding land is running low on resources to support the community.

The novel opens with a poignant birthing ceremony, setting the tone for the journey ahead—a delicate balance of hope and foreboding. With new life in the community, the community’s impact on the land around them comes into question. How much longer can they stay tucked away from the rest of the world before they must leave? Others have left before, never to return, and the journey from their last settlement was perilous with many lives lost along the way.

But fear of the past isn’t the way to keep the future alive.

So, a group—collectively referred to as the walkers—takes off from the deep bush of Canada to head south toward their ancestral lands by the Great Lakes. The walkers’ quest to reclaim their ancestral lands, now void of most colonizers, resonates deeply, echoing a collective longing for healing and restoration. Rice uses the environment they move through to strengthen this theme by showcasing the way nature has reclaimed a world that colonizers tried to clip and contain. As the walkers journey southward, driven by their duty to future generations and a profound sense of ancestral obligation, the bonds between land and people grow stronger.

What sets Moon of the Turning Leaves apart and makes it a unique post-apocalypse novel is Rice’s portrayal of apocalypse not as a distant myth or something that can only happen in horror novels, but as a lived experience. Something that has, and is, still happening to many people. Rice deftly navigates the complexities of post-apocalyptic life, weaving together moments of triumph and tragedy with an eye, not for jump scares and carnage, but for healing. Through the characters, readers get to witness what it’s like to reclaim one’s homeland even after the world ends.

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: Road to Ruin by Hana Lee

Chris Kluwe | 688 words

Road to Ruin
Hana Lee
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781668035610
Saga Press, May 2024, 368 pages

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month we’re packing our magebike’s saddlebags, dodging angry pteropters, and hitting the postapocalyptic Road to Ruin, a thrilling adventure by Hana Lee.

Road to Ruin begins with Jin-Lu, one of the couriers who braves the wasteland between domes to carry goods and messages from city to city, and who is having a no good, very bad day. She’s spent the last three years running love letters between a prince trapped in one city and a princess trapped in another, but the fairy-tale pen pal romance quickly turns into a vicious struggle for survival as Jin-Lu is forced to confront not just her past, but her feelings for the pair of distanced lovers who she connects, as well as the hastening decline of civilization itself. Mysteries unfold, high speed chases ensue, and three people find themselves drawn together in the most unexpected ways.

Set in a battered desert wasteland filled with isolated cities, strange mutants, and bloodthirsty raiders, and featuring a tough-as-nails courier protagonist, Road to Ruin draws some very obvious inspiration from films like Mad Max, but author Hana Lee quickly makes the reader aware that an homage is not the same thing as a copycat. While there are parts that readers will find familiar, Lee does an amazing job of not letting anything feel derivative or tropey, instead crafting a fantastic environment that is clearly not Earth and stands completely on its own. The world of Road to Ruin is lush without being overbearing, and serves as a stunning backdrop for the most important part of the story.

I’m speaking, of course, of the characters.

It is rare to find a book that nails complex personal dynamics between multiple people in the way Lee has, and all I can say is that it’s spectacular. Every character has a depth that seems to leap off the page, and in particular, the relationship between Jin-Lu and the two royals she moves between is equal parts beautiful, frustrating, heartfelt, bittersweet, and full of a longing that coils through it all (it reminded me a lot of This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone). The characters constantly surprised me with their choices, though they always made sense, and the ending left me both impressed and instantly wanting more.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t touch on Road to Ruin’s underlying themes of the abuses of power and price of freedom. Both are heavy subjects, but Lee touches on them with delicacy and aplomb and like any good dystopian tale, moral quandaries abound. It’s also clear that even though Lee has crafted a world entirely her own, the dilemmas of the modern world aren’t far from her mind, and the human cost of those issues are always lurking in the background.

However, lest you think Road to Ruin is solely about interpersonal angst and ethical introspection, I’m here to reassure you that it’s also one hell of an adventure. Lee is unafraid to lean hard into the action aspects of her dystopia, and there are plenty of frenetic chases, battles against both people and nature, as well as mutant magical dinosaurs, and any book that has mutant magical dinosaurs roaming a storm-blasted wasteland is automatically on the top of my list.

Overall, I devoured this book entirely in one sitting because I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. Road to Ruin is full of love, despair, courage, and most of all, heart, and Lee should be proud of what she’s crafted. If this is the first stop in Jin-Lu’s journey, I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

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: Varsha Dinesh

Laurel Amberdine | 729 words

How did “Sparrow and the Parasol” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

The first iteration of this story was written during the delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was part of an online flash-fiction workshop run by Clarion West; this was the story I wrote for the fourth week while quarantining after traveling back to my hometown in Kerala, India. I remember that I was trying to challenge myself to write a chaotic, peopled world full of sensations that were in direct opposition to the sterile confines of my room. I wanted sensorial excess. I wrote the opening scene to be a mélange of strangeness, magic, fluids, meat, pain. Then I tried to thread that feeling of excess and insatiability into every scene.

For this story, I drew from cultural experiences like the sheer overstimulation of temple processions—the atmosphere of feverish worship, the physical crush of bodies, the ravaging transformation rituals that performers of art-forms like garudan thookam have to undergo. There is also a sort of ritual bargaining that is common in polytheistic households: we promise certain gods certain specific things if our wishes or desires are met. From there I thought about the commodification of worship itself, the endless consumer appetite for spiritual experiences.

For obvious reasons—i.e., the soul-sucking lockdown—the story did not work out the way I wanted it to that first time. I submitted a sub-par version of the story for critique, got some incredible feedback, but ultimately decided to trunk it because I couldn’t find an end befitting the beginning.

A couple of years after that first attempt, I revisited the story while at the actual six-week Clarion West workshop. Funnily enough, I did this right after escaping quarantine again, except this time my confinement was all the way across the world in Seattle. (Even now I associate this story with the smell of hand-sanitiser, which is hopefully the farthest thing a reader might get from it.)

Luckily, time, distance, and the brilliance of my fellow workshoppers made the story rather easy to fix. It just needed to be grosser, gorier and godlier.

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

I have ADHD, so my writing space is something to which I attach sacred value. I enjoy an extra-large desk, an ever-rising wall of notebooks, and an indulgently pink and clicky mechanical keyboard. I’ve been slowly populating my shelves with odd items that I collect on my travels. So far I’ve got a Czech grim-reaper marionette, a magenta Balinese cat, and a solar-powered Japanese bobblehead geisha. I went years without a dedicated writing space, resisting its allure to sit up hunched in my bed and write, but I’ve seen the light now.

Where are you in this story?

Hopefully slurping questionably legal soup with one of the Aunties and steering well clear of the gods.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

Recently I’ve been reading some incredible South Asian SFF in both short form and novels. I finished Kuzhali Manickavel’s (brilliant, funny) Things We Found During the Autopsy, and immediately ran to pick up her latest collection. I’m still thinking about M.L. Krishnan’s Interstate Mohinis, and Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors. I have yet to find proper words to describe what these incredible works make me feel—mostly delighted shock at the possibilities they open up for me to think about how I want my own writing to evolve. I’m inspired by writing that defies the more oppressive of genre conventions; I love seeing characters from the margin who are tender, violent, irreverent, imperfect. I’ve started to define true inspiration as anything that battles my own paucity of imagination about what is “acceptable” in speculative fiction.

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

I’m working on a South Asian dark fantasy novel which has even more to say about worship as currency. I have a new novelette coming out soon with Strange Horizons that I’ve been describing as surreal, gacha body horror.

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: Andrea Kriz

Laurel Amberdine | 549 words

How did this story originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

This was one of those stories where I came up with the title, or rather the names of the two main characters, first. “The Virgin Bitch of the Resistance” comes from a line in Pierre Assouline’s essay, “Beneath the Scarf of Jean Moulin” (translated by Ruth Larson). I misread “the Virgin Birth of the Resistance” as ”the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance” and immediately began wondering who that could be. Udo’s name comes from the main character of Roberto Bolaño’s novel, “The Third Reich.” These inspirations were also the starting point of these characters’ personalities—someone who would do absolutely anything in the name of Resistance versus someone obsessed with gamifying war to the point of withdrawing from real life (and the human impact of the real war their game is based on). The opposition and magnetism of these two characters, their struggles, and their world rose around that.

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

I got “stuck” many times while writing this. The earliest draft I have of this story is from March 2021! I tried pitting Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance against each other in many different settings, including a University in present-day Boston and in a VR fighting game tournament. Each time the story would peter out and I wouldn’t be able to finish it. When this happened, I would set the story aside and come back to it later, figuring out what the “core” was and rewriting around that. Pretty much the only constants throughout the drafts were the names of the main characters and a few sections of dialogue (“the most beautiful name in the world” and the firing squad conversation).

You’ve talked in the past about being inspired by anime—did any of those inspirations fuel this story?

The mechas in this story were extremely inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime which has also driven a lot of my past writing. The mechas in Evangelion (spoiler) must be implanted with a core containing the soul of the pilot’s mother in order to function properly. Maternal love and protection are recurring themes throughout the anime. I wondered how such a mecha system could be industrialized on a national scale and what kind of nation might seek to industrialize such a thing. I wanted to explore how the act of giving birth can also be used as a means of oppression when forced upon people.

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

My debut short story collection, Learning to Hate Yourself as a Self-Defense Mechanism is coming out from Interstellar Flight Press on May 6th, 2024. I also have a complete list of my stories on my website (andreakriz.wordpress.com/fiction). If any readers are looking for particular recommendations, I’d love for them to check out my previous Lightspeed story, “Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell” (December 2023 issue).

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: Deborah L. Davitt

Laurel Amberdine | 434 words

How did “In the Hands of the Mountain God” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

This story originated in a Codex contest. Codex is a forum for neo-pro and professional authors, and I’ve been a member since 2016 or so. The contest prompt was the image of a glass bridge between two giant bronze hands sticking out of a mountainside. The story flowed from there, first as a 750-word flash piece, and then expanded into the story you see today.

Where are you in this story?

Oof, that’s a tough one. I am right there in the questioning of gods, asking why bad things happen to good people, and in the idea that sometimes, we have to step up and take personal responsibility. Sometimes we are accountable to the universe, and maybe even gods get tired and need a hand.

What are you reading lately?

I run the Shining Moon podcast, so I read a ton every week to get ready to ask my guests questions! Every week, they inspire me with their work and creativity. I’ve recently read work by R.K Duncan, Priya Chand, Zohar Jacobs, Samantha Mills, and Risa Wolf just to name a few.

Other than writing, do you have any other creative pursuits? What do you do to relax?

I play tabletop role playing games, though that leads to a lot more writing, hah! I currently run two concurrent campaigns—one Blades in the Dark, and one VtM, on alternate weekends, and guide my players through a play-by-post campaign set alongside the main campaign during the week. I’m also playing in Tuesday and Wednesday games that are each less demanding than that.

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

I am currently working on bringing a poetry collection into the world; it’s already written, but it’s going to be self-published later in the year. It’s called Xenoforming, and is a novella in verse about a group of human colonists of a new world who were involved in terraforming the planet, except then aliens arrive and start their own terraforming project—to include grabbing the colonists, who are resisting the process, and linking them to a hive mind. The colonists are thus xenoformed, and the social changes and how they survive the process—or desperately need to be liberated from it—serve as the bulk of the narrative.

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: Oyedotun Damilola Muees

Laurel Amberdine | 536 words

How did “Warning Notes From an Annihilator Machine” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

Sometimes when I am not doing anything serious I allow different thoughts to run freely in my head. One of those many thoughts was wondering how cool it would be for humans to be able to see into the future.

The advantage of this ability would be to curb accidents, pandemic, plague, deaths etc.

But because of the abuse of this power, the creator of the Earth kept it away from us humans.

In the midst of these thoughts, I began to imagine how nature and the environment warns us against certain moves and actions that will cause us severe harm.

Humans by nature have the ability of choice. Do we take heed when we have been told of an impending danger or we just act oblivious of these warnings, just like the people of old in the era of Noah?

All of these ideas coagulated to form this story.

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

I like to write sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall with a pillow behind my back. I also like very slow music (Nordic-folk & dark pop) playing at a faint volume in the background.

Natural light peeping in from the window, chirping birds, occasional movement of vehicles, fresh air, and plantain chips to munch on.

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

Yes-o. I got stuck many times. This is the first story I ever wrote without dialogue. At first it seemed like a project I’ll never be able to complete.

I’m used to always writing dialogue in my stories, so putting together over three thousand words without a single line of dialogue was tough.

I read and reread stories without dialogue. This helped me to move the story forward. I also engaged in other activities like watching wildlife documentaries to allow my head to breathe.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

Focus should be on the ANM’s consistent effort to save the boy. He was willing to go the extra mile, even violate some laws to save a fraction of earth.

This for me means feelings can grow even from the hardest of hearts.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I’m reading Sim Kern’s “Real Sugar is Hard to Find.” I’m a sucker for climate fiction works.

Authors such as Nnedi Okorafor, N.K Jemisin, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Marlon James, and Neil Gaiman, inspire me.

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

I’m working on a dark fantasy novellete about a wendigo terrorising a village.

I have works published in Reckoning, Clarkesworld, Our Move Next anthology, Solarpunk, Reactor (Africa Risen anthology), Nightmare, Omenana, and Science Fiction World.

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, July 2024

The Editors | 242 words

Coming up in July, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Dominique Dickey (“The Last Lucid Day”) and Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (“The Heist for the Soul of Humanity”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “7 Writing Mistakes That Will Turn off Readers—No. 4 Can Be a Killer” from Aimee Picchi and “The Aliens Said They Want to Party” by Joel William David Buxton.

Plus, we have original fantasy by Vanessa Fogg (“The Red Queen’s Heart”) and Carrie Vaughn (“Between Above and Below”). We also have a flash story (“Songs of the Sorrow of Thorns”) from Amayah Perveen, and another (“A Guide on How to meet the Deity of Many Faces”) from Oyedotun Damilola Muees.

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: Richard Thomas, Archita Mittra, Jae Steinbacher, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Ai Jiang, and Ashok K. Banker.

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.

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 two 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)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming, Oct. 2024]

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.