Oct 5, 2009 My short story, “Partum,” is a part of MungBeing’s issue #28. There is some wonderful content in this issue, which is themed around “craft,” but not the sort that you can ride in. “Partum” barely fits into the theme, so I’m really glad Mark and Jody put it in.
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Jul 28, 2009 I love lists with justifications. I love them.
Jul 27, 2009 I managed to take another pass at two different short stories over the course of the week last week, and have completely nullified my last post’s claim of order and structure during my periods of short story output. Neither of these two stories, finished and submitted, fall into the mold of The Great Wide World Gone Dark.
Partum is a miserable pile of masculinity, written from the point-of-view of a man who conceived a child with his wife, with whom he then made a joint decision to let the child gestate in an artificial chamber at the hospital so that both parents could continue their careers and lives. You’ve read stories about mothers dying in childbirth, right? Partum is about what might happen if the mother died before childbirth. Long before.
Incidentally, Lis and I are trying to conceive.
Stilts is a story about horror stories, and it had two primary inspirations. One: I think horror is unfairly maligned as a genre lacking strong emotional resonance. Not primal resonance, but emotional. Two: I have learned, too many times, that I have unintentionally hurt someone — even in the smallest fashion — by including a part of their life or experience in my story and perverting it just this side of beyond recognition. So, Stilts is about a writer who perverts the lives around him into wicked stories, and about the people who are capable of recognizing that the soul of such horror is essentially romance.
Hopefully, they’ll both find a home before too long and then they’ll wind up posted here.
Jun 2, 2009 I’m kind of sad that I ran out of worthwhile, published work to post here. It has been awhile since I finished anything that felt publishable, but I recently sent out a couple of short stories to higher tier magazines, and am waiting on a response, now.
There are three big writing projects occupying my interest at various times, right now:
1) CHUD.com. I love this place. I love how it has evolved over the past few years. I’m really happy that I have the time to contribute again. According to my DEVONthink database, I’ve done 21 DVD reviews since I started in early April. Criticism isn’t my best skill, but it’s a fun one to exercise.
2) Fingerless. This is a novel without any trace of the speculative or fantastic, which, now that I think about it, is a natural sort of extension of my development as a writer. Fingerless is about a character I’ve had in mind for several years, now, so it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever attempted. I’m not sure if the things I’m putting in this character’s mouth are worth sharing, yet, but I’m trying to invest her with enough distinct experiences to make her at least interesting to read. Currently, I’m getting a couple thousand words done each week, sneaking off to a coffee shop with my laptop on Saturday and Sunday in the morning after my graveyard shift wife goes to sleep.
3) The stories of The Great Wide World Gone Dark. My short story output can be roughly divided into periods, based on the length of time and associated change of manner and voice in between spurts of creativity. The recent stories, the ones out to editors right now, have all be linked by being moody fantasies in which some element of the unreal challenges a character with solitude in some way, either imposing it or removing it. When this topic stops fascinating me, there will probably be another break for a while, and then I’ll get another raft of short stories with a different feel. I categorize these ones by the first story I wrote in this mode: The Great Wide World Gone Dark, which hasn’t been published yet.
So far, the stories I have finished under this heading are: The One-Way Cave, The Kid’s All Out of Time, The Parting of the Sea, and The Great Wide World Gone Dark. There are at least three more sketched out.
And that’s what occupies my creative time, these days.
Mar 10, 2009 100 words. Originally published in The Drabbler.
“Our love is nothing but a mental exercise,” he said from behind his faceplate.
“Your air is poisonous to me,” she replied.
“We needn’t breathe together,” he said. “We only need to touch. I want
to feel your skin, to form a real memory.”
The other relented, loosened her glove. They touched. The chemical
reactions were numerous, thrills and surges of endorphins, but the
most obvious was the sudden flame that sprang between their searching
fingers and crisped their flesh.
When the girl’s father picked her up from sickbay, he cuffed her and
said, “We don’t mix with the others.”
Mar 5, 2009 Originally published in Lost in the Dark.
The girl had her eyes set high. The last apple was gripping stubbornly to the cloudmost branch of her Father’s scraggly tree. He had planted it the year she was born. It had grown to twice her height. The apple hung out of her tallest reach. She blew a lock of mousey hair out of her eyes. She was crowned with dirty leaves, as if the tree had been throwing its only ammunition at her, fighting for its last fruit.
The girl took a stone and threw it at the apple. She overshot. The stone sailed out of the yard and into the close, encroaching forest. Like all little girls, she hadn’t bothered to think of what would happen if she failed.
“Ow!” came a voice from the forest. The girl’s ears perked at the sound of a horse, not the heavy stamp of a working horse but the light toss of a hoof that can afford to be shod and reshod in silver.
The second the horse’s head peered around a bend in the path, the girl darted into the house. The head was white, bled free of all the muddy browns and blacks that marked the peasant horses she knew.
She slammed the door. Her father grumbled a little from his room, where he lay pillowed on a foul-smelling earthen jug. She bent to a knot hole and spied greedily out.
The man on the horse was stained with expensive purples and skin-deep crimsons. His cloak stretched past his back into a blanket for his mount. It was lined with soft, unsullied white fur. He held a whip with a brushed copper handle. The girl couldn’t make it out at this distance, but she imagined the cord was soft brown skin, just enough to give a gentle prodding to a loyal marching steed or servant.
“Warrit, gel?” muttered her Father. She had heard him coming. Even on an earthen floor, his steps echoed.
“It’s the king, father! I hit him with a stone!”
“You did what?” roared her father, already throwing open the door, letting his face fall. “Your majesty!” The king dismounted, still holding the whip. He reached a ginger-colored hand to his forehead and tested the anger of a bright red bump.
“I demand to know the meaning of this. Speak quickly, or it’s the stocks.”
“My liege!” The girl’s father bowed and scraped at the dry soil beneath his face. “It was my daughter!”
“Your daughter, whom you are responsible for. Where is she?”
The girl’s father pointed back to the house and the king flexes the hand holding his whip. “Tell her to come out this instant.”
The girl came without being called, close enough to hear for herself. “I’m sorry, your majesty,” she murmured.
“Sorry is an excellent way to be, girl.”
The girl stared curiously up at the king. He was only a head taller than she. The strand of his whip was hard, black. His eyes were pale enough to be called white. There was no hint of amusement beneath his mustache.
“Will you curtsey to your king, girl?” She did. “How old are you?”
“If it please your majesty, she is at her sixteenth since being named.”
“You are in no position to question what would please his majesty, even were you sober.” The girl laughed. The king turned back to her and brought a hand up to his nose, across the nostrils. He smelled of horse, rich and huge. “You are an impertinent girl.”
“Majesty. I don’t know that word.”
“I would not expect you to. Tell me, what words do you know?”
“I know how to name each thing in this yard, and in the house. I know words to name you, and your horse. I know myself.”
“You would name my horse for me?” There was no amusement blushing the King’s face, but something similar brushed against his voice. “Do so.”
“He looks a Thruppence to me, your majesty.”
“She cost a good deal more than thruppence, girl. What is your name?”
“Esmerelda,” blurted her Father. He felt lost, hung-over, and he clutched at this tiny contribution as though it could save his life. The king stared down at the back of his head. A corner of his lip rose, pulling away from the grime and lice.
“Where is your mother, Esmerelda?”
The girl shrugged. Her father dared to roll back onto his heels. His eyes were level with his daughter’s tiny breasts.
“Your majesty. She passed away last year. In winter.”
“I’ve done all her work since then, lord. Plus his, when he’s in his cups and bottles.”
“Esme!”
Now the king laughed.
“A daring girl. You shall lose your right arm for the stone. Your left, though, you will keep, as I trow the burden you are made to carry, here. What is it you do?”
The girl was speechless. How, she wondered, could he put, in a single sentence, the words to wound her straight next to a pleasant question? She opened her dirty mouth to retort.
“She is wool-spinner, lord. But lord!” The king lifted both eyebrows up into his tousled hair.
“Yes?”
“Don’t punish her haughtiness, lord. She is a stubborn girl—” a belch interrupted the plea. The king’s nostrils flared, and the girl’s father fought against the blood threatening to abandon his face.
“Stubborn is a word. Haughty. She thinks herself above her station. I shall have her executed.”
Desperate instinct framed the father’s next words. “She can spin straw into gold, my lord! She is only haughty, as you say, because her talent makes her so.”
“Straw into gold? Is this true, girl?” He fixes his eyes on the girl. She is silent. He slides his gaze down, over her small swelling. There is her Father’s pleading face, peeping around her body like a groundhog testing the air to see if it’s really Spring.
“Of course it is true, my lord. I told her to never tell. Can you imagine what would happen? Why, she would be drowned as a witch.”
“At least.” The king turned away and leaned an arm on his horse. He paused, and both the girl and her father balanced on the pressing of a knife’s edge. The King swung up into his saddle.
“Come, girl. With me. We shall see this magic of yours tonight. Afterward, if I am not pleased, you shall lose not one, but both of your arms. And you—” the king extended a hand to the girl and a glare to the father “—you shall speak nothing of this. Not now, not ever. I shall send men to ensure you are properly stewarding this land tomorrow.”
The king pulled the girl up into the saddle. She felt his manhood grow into the small of her back as they clattered down the path on light, ringing hooves. She didn’t cry.
A pair of eyes watched the forest. They blinked and creased as a grin pressed against them.
#
The castle smelled of piss and poor man’s air. The girl said as much and the king exploded with laughter.
“Perhaps your tongue as well, lass.”
They had left the horse in the stables near the keep. Piles of dung clogged their steps to the double oaken doors. Some of the stench clung to the girl’s shoes. She asked for leave to take a bath. The king responded with a heavy hand on her shoulder and a step closer.
He took her down worn stone steps. She went a pace in front, his hand not so much guiding as adding impetus. She slipped once or twice. His grip followed her down. The first time, he tried to offer his other palm, open in aid, but she brushed it away, knowing as she did that she had invited another chop on the block.
He halted her at the bottom of the steps. She blinked in the gloom. They were beneath the ground, surrounded by dark mouths that must have been doors. She opened her mouth to ask where they were. A sharp squeak halted the words at the tip of her tongue. The king hauled on an old, rusty door. It looked as though the rust was holding it together; given a good cleaning, it would be nothing more than an iron skeleton.
The king stepped aside, brushed the burnt red dust off his hands, and mocked her in a low bow.
“Your chambers, great sorceress.”
She slipped in like a mouse in short hurried steps measured with long pauses. The cell was a cylinder, several stories tall. A single high window shone dirty light and stink in a gray column, picking out the center of the floor and hiding everything else in black contrast. She moved into the light and shivers.
“What am I to do?” She paused long, received no answer. “If I am to spin, give me the wool.”
“Yes,” said the king. “Your wool.” He smirked.
How could her father do this? she thought. If only he had been sober— but no, her father’s sobriety was no different from his drunkenness, merely interrupted by fewer belches and bawdy, repetitive stories.
“The straw, then.” She drew herself just out of the light, letting it fall between her and the king.
“I shall have my steward bring you a small pile. I expect to be pleased by the morning. If I am not, you lose your arms.”
“And perhaps a leg and tongue,” the girl shot back.
“Which would all be a shame, lass. You are quite beautiful, in your woodsy way. No matter. If your magic carries you through the night, however, you can be sure that I shall give you a bath, a few nice clothes and trinkets, and a warmer, fuller bed to sleep in.”
“Yours?”
He crossed the room and slapped her. The weight behind the blow drove her to her knees, scabbed from the forest, now scraped on the cold stone. The king turned and left. The door squealed shut and a bar shot through a lock like a thunderclap.
“God’s wounds!” screamed the girl. She pounded a shuddering fist against the floor. She imagined her curse battering against the walls of her cell like a bat in a cage, finally finding the small window, blistering across the sky and into the Lord’s magnificent eye.
“Give me strength.” These words dripped out of her mouth and into a cold puddle on the stones.
The steward arrived some hours later with a bemused expression, a small cart of straw, and a spinning wheel. He warned the girl against accidentally pricking herself on the spindle and she glared. The steward gave her an amiable shrug, halted an habitual bow, and slipped out the door.
The girl lifted a piece of straw and twirled it in her fingers. The light was deepening in color, heading toward pure black. She kicked at the spinning wheel. It was old, cracked, and mostly useless. She didn’t think she could even spin wool on such a machine; that is, if she knew how to spin wool.
She cried small tears. They dripped out of her open eyes, off her chin, onto the floor, into the cracks between the flagstones.
“Hsst!”
Startled, the girl looked around. It had sounded like a cat. It was nearly full dark now; the window hung in the sky like a malformed moon. A squat silhouette leapt at the hole and whuffled like an ancient dog.
“I say! Hsst!”
“Who is there?”
“A charming little beggar boy? No! Not such! I am a helper, a creature, a tinker and thinker, and transfigurator — specializing in the plain and the ordinary.” During the speech, the silhouette crawled down the wall of the cell, now speaking into its own chest as it flipped easily over a handhold, now grinning its words up into the girl’s shadowed face. “I heard from the birds and the wind of your plight and would offer my humble services to you, if you would take me.”
“You would help me spin this straw to gold?”
“I would spin this straw to gold, meadow lark. You would sleep. You look as though you need it.”
“But why would you help me?”
She peered at the man. He was squat and nimble, wide-mouthed, deep-chested, and musical in tone. He was a contrast walking, and the girl would not have been surprised if, in daylight, his face was Moorish on one half and Norse on the other.
His head tilted and she hears what must be dry skin creaking as his mouth gapes even further.
“You are beautiful, my woodsy girl. I would help you just for this chance to look on you again. Now take you to that corner and lay down your worries as your pillow. Come morning, I shall be gone, and this straw shall be gold.”
The girl did as she was bidden. As she slid into a dream of white horses and small, wet sounds, she heard the frantic squeaking of the wheel, whirling around its unusual task.
The little man smiled as she slept and let a word fall off his tongue, honey and magic, over and over again. Each time the word found straw it spread, thick and sticky, softening the fibers and staining them gold. The bobbin spun, collecting thick, rich strands that would echo the sun come the morning.
#
The girl was awake before light. Her dreams had been troubled and the floor too cold for a comfortable sleep. She let her eyes slit open, fearful of seeing a pile of straw, and berating herself for having fallen asleep. The little man could have done anything he pleased to her, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, to curl up and forget, to be haunted by strange dreams instead of hideous reality.
The pile of straw was gone. Seven bobbins absolutely full of spun gold stood in a neat row beneath the wheel. The small tendons in her feet started to spasm uncontrollably as she stood. She picked up one of the bobbins. The thread was almost warm; it at least carried the memory of warmth, as though all gold were descended from sunlight.
She dropped the bobbin and whirled around, certain she had felt eyes on her neck. There was no one else in the room. She looked up; no one was at the window. The little smiling man was gone, and might not ever have been there if it weren’t for the riches flanking the old wooden wheel. She bent down to right the spilled bobbin and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
The sun was climbing higher, but the light in the cell was still cold and gray.
The door wailed and the king strode in. His eyes fumbled about in the dimness, came to rest on the seven bobbins. He was surprised, yes, and shocked, but mostly pleased, having gotten to be king by delighting in surprising fortune.
“Well, well, girl! You have been busy, haven’t you?”
The girl bobbed a curtsey, peering past his cape while her eyes were down. The steward stood in the doorway, mouth like a fish’s.
“Stand up, girl. Esmerelda. And tell me: how is it that you were able to do all this?”
The girl bobbed again. She bubbled small words that meant nothing and the king grumbled, reminding her of the previous day.
“Answer me plain, girl. You do not, after all, need your tongue to spin.”
“Please, your majesty, it was so hard,” she begged, hoping to draw some sympathy like a veil across his face. For a moment, there was something in the way his eyes were set, but it tore from ceiling to floor as the sun spiked onto the wheel and the gold shimmered anew with faerie promise.
The king’s mouth opened, stuck between a word and a sound of glory. He swallowed, settled on a word.
“I shall be that much more pleased to see my wealth increased on the morrow, then. Steward: I am satisfied. Tell Rickard that he may go back to the kitchens.” The steward turned and muttered. A pair of heavy boots scraped up the stairs. The girl didn’t see to whom they belonged.
The king smoothed his mustache. “Bring her bread and water. And another batch of straw. Larger this time.”
The king himself bent and stacked the bobbins in his arms, letting his thick gloves brush against the grime of the floor and trail through the small stagnant puddles. He almost dropped one of the spools. He chuckled to himself, adjusted his armload, and swept out of the cell without another word.
Around mid-day, as the girl judged by the slant of the sun, the steward returned with two cartfuls of straw and a bit of a smirk.
“My privacy, sir.”
She sat in front of the spindle, enclosed by the dirty yellow piles. Her thoughts blurred across the whole spectrum from fear to outrage. Would the little man return? The empty light started to spill out of the cell. It was getting darker by the second. Her eyes were getting emptier.
As the last bit of sun faded, she picked up a single spear of straw. She placed it on the wheel and pumped the pedal. The straw just sat there, unwound and untouched. She trawled her dreams, trying to dig up the words the little man had spoken as he spun. They had sounded like: Truth-in-broken-cousin. She let the sounds elbow their own way off her tongue, and got a mush of muddled tongue and meaning. Nothing happened.
She sobbed, just once.
“Hsst!”
The sharp whisper lanced down into her prison and she looked up with a shining, invisible smile.
“You’ve returned!”
A little, echoing laugh made its scampering descent from the window.
“Never before have I heard such a pretty phrase to greet me. Never before. I am a happy little man, and helper, too. The birds and wind—” he was in front of her, now, and a little closer than she might like. She could smell him; he smelled as though he had never bathed. “—they told me of your second task. Don’t worry, my little woody wench! These things always come in threes. Nearly finished now, nearly done.”
“You will help me again?”
“I may.”
“Oh, but sir—” her words were cracked by his laugh, but she stumbled ahead like a young aristocrat anyway. “—you must help me!”
“Must I? I helped you once, and where’s your gratitude? Naught but a smile for the little tinkering, thinkering man.”
“What could I give you? I have nothing!”
“You have your berry lips, little help-lass. If I could taste of them, then I would feel the strength to spin the whole of the night, every star from its silver light into soft silk. Just a kiss, little gel.”
“Just a kiss?” The girl’s lips peeled back of their own. She pursed them, purposefully. The man stank, but surely a little taste of bad breath would be worth the freedom it would buy her. She nodded. The little man didn’t dance or clap his hands. He just tilted his head up, opened his eyes wide and pushed out his distended lips.
The girl closed her eyes and shuddered down until their lips met. He tasted of wood-smoke and old potatoes; she, the mold of captivity. When she pulled away, she saw a sadness in his eyes, suspended by his bushy arching eyebrows.
“There,” she managed. “Is it to my lord’s pleasure?”
The little man laughed again, transforming his eyes into thin slits of humor.
“Your lord, lass, will never kiss you. Now get you again to sleep, and dream of the future. When you wake, your king’s treasury shall be deeper, and you that much closer to breathing back the open air of your happy forest home.”
She obeyed, gratefully. She chewed on her lips, but couldn’t dislodge the taste of him. Nor could she shake the thought of her happy home, reeking of alcohol, floored in dirt, and sparsely draped in small, wrinkled fruits and last month’s vegetables.
#
Morning came with a fanfare. The door burst open while the girl was still blinking the night away. She had slept in this morning. Already the sun was making brilliant fourteen bobbins full of gold. The king shoulders his way past the heralds as they are lowering their trumpets. There were other men clustered in the hall outside the cell, all robed in finery and identical in their gaping expression.
“Stay out of the way, girl,” his majesty hissed. Then, louder, “See, good men? Pure gold! You may test it if you like. I have been very thorough, of course, but there is no need for me to be fearful of your happening upon a clever trick or jest. The girl is far too bovine, and I am far too blessed!”
The king underhanded one bobbin to the gathered men. They conferred among themselves in voices too low for the girl to make out. Before long, one man cleared his throat.
“We can find no fault in the alchemy, your majesty,” he said. The king beamed.
“Esmerelda—” tossed the King over his shoulder as he loaded his arms with the riches “—if tonight you can turn all the stables’ bedding to gold, you shall have golden bedding of your own. I swear on my family name.”
The door shut. The girl was again alone and cold. She stood still, a rod of cold iron seeming to splint her spine. Hours passed. Daylight waned. She didn’t bother to capture her thoughts and wrap language around them. They washed around her in red waves, chilling her and warming her in their ill-timed turns. Monsters, or ghosts of monsters, or voices of ghosts, or the taste of voices. Nothing made sense. Freedom comes when you don’t have to think— but she halted that thought before it fully formed, narrowing her eyes at the cracking mortar of her cell.
Freedom was the forest and the monolithic stones she used to play were castles before they were quarried, hewn down, made into gravestones and dungeon bricks, the bricks that blocked her sight and smell.
One more night. The moon rose.
The girl stretched her shoulder blades apart, letting the iron holding them straight dissolve. She hunched her back and took a good look around the cell. The steward hadn’t come by during the day with a new load of old straw. Did the king expect her to perform out in the stables, where he could watch her and her deception.
“Hsst!”
No, not yet, thought the girl. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. She smelled the smoke and sweat of the little man, getting stronger and stronger.
“I heard another rumor, woodsy girl.”
Her teeth were clenched as fists. She pummeled out her words.
“There is naught here for you.”
“Naught and nothing? Oh, but hear how wrong you are!”
The door squeaked and the steward backed into the room. He was tugging on a huge mat, spilling over with dirty straw. His back was straining, and his white hands were covered in dung. He dropped the mat, turned, and glared at the girl, huffing loudly so she would take notice. Gradually his eyes trickled off her cold, unresponsive stare and down to the wide-eyed, grinning face of the little man.
“Who is—”
The little man opened his mouth and spoke one word. It entered the girl’s ears, she was certain, but she couldn’t remember what it sounded like, or how it felt, or tasted. It had had a smell, she knew, but it had only touched the tip of her nose, like a sweet kiss, then giggled away.
The Steward’s eyes rolled up into the high corners, then clicked back down. He scowled, grumbled, “There are eight more matfuls,” and never looked at the little man again.
The girl did. She was met with the widest grin yet, and a shrug.
“What’s your name, my girl?” the little man asked.
“Mother called me Esmerelda.”
The little man hummed her name without opening his mouth, just letting the sounds drift around his tongue and teeth. He swallowed and spoke.
“You have quite a job to do tonight.”
“Me? But I thought—”
“Of course I’ll help you. But this time not for your beauty, and not for your kiss.”
The steward backed into the room, grumbling, hauling another mat. The little man didn’t speak until he had left for the next.
“This will be the largest favor I have done for you. And what have you given me?”
“My beauty. My kiss,” stammered the girl, missing his oddly twisted and musical words.
“Not enough. Not much, and not enough. I need much more from you, tonight, in exchange for this. My fingers will bleed, and my tongue will be bruised and thick in the morning”
“Then what? What do you want for this?”
The little man walked in a small circle, blowing air between his teeth, half-whistling. The tune wriggled through the girl’s ears and made her want to go swimming.
“If the king returns tomorrow and finds you sleeping amid a pile of horseshit and hay, you will lose your fingers, your hands, your arms, your legs, your pretty breasts and nose. He won’t speak to you. He will be cold, silent, but right there in front of you, watching Toothless Rickard at his work. You will plead for a morsel of pity, at least until your tongue comes out. He will take your house as the crown’s and kill your father; a swifter punishment than yours, for certain, but no less hideous. And when you are gone and thrown into the pit, I will swing past, drop my pants, and take a shit on your ungrateful grave.”
“But sir—” a sharp laugh “—please! I haven’t . . . I mean, I don’t even know what you want me to do.” She saw herself underground, covered over with soil, and his hairy arse adding derision to death. She is sure that soft jade grass would cover her everywhere but that one spot, which would be brown, cracked, and fever hot.
He stopped whistling. “Your maidenhead,” he said.
“No!” She backed up. He matched her steps. She flattened herself against the freezing wall. The steward entered, gave her a funny look, dusted off his hands, and left again. “Help!” she cried and he doesn’t care.
The little man stared into her belly. “Give me your maidenhead,” he said. “A child will come of it. The child will be mine, without question or care.”
The girl lost control of her tongue. She babbled, was silent, screamed; it made no difference to the little man. The steward came and went, finally bringing in the last haul of straw. The piles ringed the doorway, blocking it from sight. In a moment of silence, the girl heard the door shut, a delayed echo of her hysteria. The bolt pierced the lock.
A sob— she realized it was hers. She brought herself up straight and focused on the little man. He hadn’t moved an inch or whisker.
“Well?”
“You shall have my firstborn child.”
“And your first time, whore.”
The dark words scrambled up her legs and dug dirty hands into her stomach. “And my maidenhead,” she said.
“Good. Then I can help you! Bring the wheel.”
She tugged the old machine in fits and starts, filling her palms with splinters. The little man wandered among the piles of filthy straw, muttering under his breath and poking at the odd lump of dung.
“Lie here.” He pointed at a pile much cleaner than the rest. Cold, she stretched on the straw. “Lift up your skirts.” She tried to let her eyes anchor on a point on the ceiling, but it was far too dark, the ceiling invisible. Her eyes wandered, loose and frightened by the freedom.
She felt a stab of warmth. She didn’t dare look. It felt like a beetle crawling between her legs with small warm feet. She closed her eyes the first time he groaned, squeezed them tighter the second time, and sobbed the third.
“All done, princess, all done. Now, you must go to sleep and remember what you’ve promised. Golden dreams, my little woodsy girl. Golden dreams.”
She didn’t open her eyes. Her skirts were bunched about her waist. Her sex was held in the palm of the hot, stagnant air. The wheel started to spin, squeaking each revolution, rhythmic, a songbird. She couldn’t think of anything but the in and out, her mind producing dreamlike images of things she hadn’t seen, of his thing, of him bending over her, and he squeaked like a wheel every time he pressed into her.
The little man watched the girl fall asleep while his tongue and fingers pulled the straw through the dyeing magic. “Don’t forget, child.”
#
He was gone when she woke halfway through the night. The wheel was silent. The straw was gone; even the smell of dung had drifted away, replaced by that summer apples and cut bark. She shivered through a short chain of half-formed thoughts. She fell asleep again, to dreams of giving birth.
Her child bawled into the world. It was a dwarf with a hook nose and long beard. Its teeth were yellow and it wouldn’t stop grinning. The twisted mouth gaped wider and wider, giving its own birth to a mirror lodged in the short stump of a throat. The mirror cracked, and each shard reflected a new ray of light, brighter and brighter and then morning was on her.
“I told you to get on your feet, girl.” The king was standing in front of her. She hadn’t heard the door, his boots, his first order. She pushed herself up off the floor, leaving her head bowed. Even the straw she had slept on had been taken. Turned to gold? She wanted desperately to look around, to make sure the payment the little man had taken had been worth the product. She pulled her curiosity down under the hoods of her eyes and curtseyed.
The king was wearing his soft skin gloves. He stroked her cheek with one and pulled a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Do you know how rich I am?” She shook her head. “Enough that I could start a crusade of my own into the Holy Lands, and may well do just that, if the mood takes me. I can pay off all the debts the realm incurred before my kingship.” He laughed. “I could buy France.” He started to walk around behind her. The king sighed deeply; she could hear the way his cynical smile shaped the sound. “I can not, however, allow this wealth to spread. If every peasant father had even a spoonful of gold for his dirt-grubbing family, then my own treasury would be that much less valuable —not to mention that much poorer.
“So, my girl—” he was in front of her again “—I can’t, you see, allow you to go home. You would bring the news of my wealth to your father, and he would tell it to his ale, and be overheard by every filthy little thing that sweats beside you folk in the fields. You must stay with me.”
“Yes, your majesty.” At least there would be food.
“As simple as that, girl?”
“My father is a bastard, your majesty.”
“That I don’t doubt. Not even coming from you.” The king breathed gold deep into his lungs and exhaled hesitantly. “You will be cleaned up and looked after. I will allow you run of the keep and castle, with this one condition: you may not speak. If I learn that you have opened your mouth even once save to stuff your face, then you will spend the rest of your years here. Right here.” The king’s hand stabbed down to the floor. The girl almost laughed to see how the soft leather wobbled and waved, like a turkey’s wattle, like a little clown gamboling in his motley. “Do you understand me, girl?”
She looked up and nodded.
“Good. I will get you a bath, after you help me carry this to my treasury.”
#
Before long, the girl had learned the ways of the keep. She spent a good deal of her time in the kitchens, because it was warm there and smelled as she always thought summers should smell. Once she was reaching for a pasty and, burning her callused fingertips, let out a yelp of pain. The kitchen maids all craned their necks to stare at this child they had been told was a mute. The girl was mortified. She would be damned by any words of explanation, and silence offered suspicion. Thinking quickly, she made a few sounds like a fool, tongue glued firmly to the top of her mouth. The head cook shook her dimpled head, dislodging flakes of pity. She handed the girl a cooler pasty and shooed her out of the kitchen.
The girl threw the pasty to a dog. Then she kicked the dog in the ribs. It snarled at her. She kicked it again, then ran.
The king heard about the incident and beat her. It was not seemly for a king’s consort to behave so in the presence of servants. “I told them you were mute, not an imbecile,” he had said.
As the months went on, became filled and round by the mystery child in her womb. She sat long in her chambers, just down the hall from the king’s, within hollering distance. He had cursed when the maids told him she was expecting. Then he came to her at night and explained the situation to her, and warned her again not to speak.
The king took her when he liked. The girl wanted him to be sure that her child was his, as much as she detested his loves of gold and iron. If he suspected even the smallest amount that the child, the freak it would certainly be, were not his, he would kill her. That had been an unspoken part of their agreement. So, whenever he came to her, she wouldn’t make a move of protest, much less a sound. The first time, she prayed his strong seed would clean her, clear the field planted by the little man. She only felt dirtier.
And now, her husband gone to France to fight a battle that he excitedly called a war, she fidgeted with her skirts and waited for happy news. To distract herself, she watched the sun crawl across the floor.
#
There was a clearing, far from castle and town, floored with deep moss and roofed with ancient branches woven into each other like lovers only wish they could be.
At its center sat the little man, humming to himself with his eyes closed. He listened to the wind buffeting the leaves, the leaves speaking like cicadas. His legs were crossed and his gnarled fingers danced over them. He smiled as though coming to a decision.
He creaked to his knees and then to his feet. He turned in a slow circle. He spied an old tree, twice struck by lightning and nearly outweighing its own roots. He padded over to it.
Masked behind a mass of thick brush, three men in black watched as the little man stroked the bark of the tree and murmured words they couldn’t hear. One man held a tiny crossbow, its string wound so tight it almost hummed. The other two held daggers, blackened so as not to glint in the filtered sunlight.
The little man took a step back, sucked in a great breath and screamed. His tongue moved as though it were shaping words, but all the assassins could hear was one long wail, the sound of a lone wolf, of a whole pack’s answer, of the moon tearing in half and dripping her pain on the oceans. They covered their ears and squinted shut their eyes.
With their eyes closed, they didn’t see the ancient tree topple, they couldn’t see the trunk suddenly hollow, sprouting a doorway here, a small window frame there. They couldn’t see the tiny bluebird flung from its nest or hear it chattering angrily into the netted branches.
The little man closed his mouth. Through it all, the air never moved beyond a breeze; but now it felt cooler, emptier. The assassins opened their eyes.
They saw the little man rap on the front door, putting his ear against it, testing its resonance. He poked a finger into the window frame, scratching at the smooth wood. He rocked onto his heels and clasped his hands behind his back. He whistled a tune, light and twisting as a curl of wood smoke.
The crossbow bolt stuck into his back. His groan of pain was visible, but silent. He reached one fluttering hand to finger the shaft, curled his fist around it, and yanked. He fell to his knees.
Daggers out, the other two assassins rushed him. The little man held the bolt in his right hand. He muttered a word and the blood vanished from its metal head, from the stained shirt on his back. He turned to face the assassins. His eyes were wild, angry, dark and getting darker.
He opened his mouth. One word slithered out and brought the world to a halt. Something blurred. A head fell into the moss, painting the green with red. The thick ground swallowed it up. Then there was nothing but the peaceful clearing and the twitter of the homeless bluebird as it flew away.
The little man didn’t smile. He heard the thrashing of the third assassin as he fought through the trees, blind with horror. The little man started to run. He dodged branches and melted through underbrush, shaded out of sight and silent. He stopped, breathing steadily. He was ahead of his quarry, the crunching of the assassin coming toward him, now.
The assassin nearly stumbled past the little man, hollow eyes grasping at the path ahead. A small, strong hand whipped out, grabbed him under the ribcage, and pulled. There was a crack and a scream. The assassin fell to the ground and looked up at the little man, who opened his mouth.
There was fire, this time. A soft rain put it out.
#
The girl had never taken up stitching as the king’s other maids and consorts had. They had tried to teach her, at the king’s insistence, but the needles had hurt her fingers, and the other girls had been too jealous of her to keep up the lessons. Not having much for distraction, she sat in front of her highest window and brooded on her plan. She looked down on the rows of apple trees of the king’s orchard. It was near to spring, but the trailing ends of cold and snow still clung to the mud and draped over the trees and fields like the train of a cape. The girl watched snow melt and considered spitting on one of the guards stationed at the foot of the keep.
A bird, desperately beating the air, grabbed her idle attention. It flew the way the king moved when he was drunk, listing mad back and forth, but somehow moving steady to his goal. The bird started to circle, gaining altitude. The girl stepped back from the window, puzzlement claiming the color of her cheeks.
The bird flew to her sill and stopped, folding its wings and shrugging like an old man testing the warmth of his coat.
“My lady? Have I news for you?”
“Have you?”
“You haven’t heard the news?”
“I haven’t heard anything, little bird. Tell me your news.”
“Did I live in the clearing, near to the little man? Did I overhear him singing about the lady and her baby— and did he call the child his own?”
The bird kept leaping back and forth on the sill, its head taking in all the room and world in fast movements, like wet lightning. The girl sat down and cupped her hands around her belly.
“You know where the little man lives. What of my assassins?”
“My lady? They were men dressed all in shadows?”
“Yes. The finest assassins in my lord’s flock.”
“Did you hear the word the little man spoke? Why did he make the men so apart? Did you see the blood?”
“He . . . killed them.”
“Did you see him break my nest? Why did he do that? Why did he sing about my lady’s baby?” The bird hopped a couple times. Its talons were so small as to be invisible, but the girl could hear the small click every time it moved. She hugged her stomach tighter. The little man was still alive. He had killed the finest murderers in the land.
“He spoke a word to do this?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
The girl closed her eyes, heard the squeak of the spinning wheel, and something softer and more magical beneath.
“Did you hear what he said?” The bird was silent. It dug its beak into its breast. “Speak,” said the girl.
“My lady? If I speak, will it hurt?”
The girl hadn’t considered that. She thought for a moment, then she raised herself and crossed to an expensive writing desk. She had insisted the king teach her to read and write, as an alternative to needlepoint. She had written a letter to her father. The king had come to her while she was writing it. He had thrown it in the fire and was rough to her that night.
She took a sheet of rough paper and placed it in the center of the desk. The inkwell was half-filled. She took it and spilled a small puddle next to the paper. A beckon, and the bird perched on her shoulder.
“Make the sounds, here.”
The bird bobbed between staring into the girl’s ear and at the spreading pool of ink.
“My lady? What does a sound look like?”
She took the bird to her bed and taught it in the voice of a patient wind. Some time later, she watched its forked black feet hop across the page, spelling a word. Then she wrung the bird’s neck.
#
After she had given birth, she held her baby and traced the line of its mouth over and over. She was glad to have it out of her, and glad that it slept beside her in her bed.
But when the king came home, he would know. He would know it wasn’t his, or suspect her magic somehow twisted his firstborn.
He wouldn’t know. The girl stretched, letting her muscles scream themselves hoarse. The baby pulled a breath into its small, sunken chest and stretched its horrible wide mouth into a yawn.
One of the maids knocked and opened the door.
“My lady. A visitor to see you.” The maid’s eyes were glazed. The new mother sank a shudder under the warmth of her quilts and nodded. The maid backed out and the little man waddled in. He hopped up onto the foot of her bed.
“Well, well, my little woodsy girl. What have we here?”
He tried to peer at the baby, but the girl blocked his view.
“This child is not yours.”
“Now, now, we had an agreement. You have paid for but half the price of your gold. I’m here for my other half.”
“Why not go father your bastard on some peasant girl?”
“That is what I did. Give me the child.”
The girl scooped her baby to her breast. Its head snapped forward and back before she remembered to place her hand beneath its neck. As she died, she bit down on another shudder of revulsion. The little man was crawling towards her, his eyes going black.
“You don’t dare harm me. Not while I hold your child. Reason with me.”
“You are a half-wit, and a girl beneath that. You have seen what I can do.” He grinned, empty. “And you may not have heard, but I took care of those men you sent to bargain with me.”
The girl took a deep breath and clutched the baby tighter, feeling its skull dig into the flesh over her heart.
“I heard. I heard more than you think.”
He paused and leaned back on his haunches, narrowing his eyes. “What?”
“I know the word.”
“What!” he exploded and leapt back. He somersaulted off the bed and out of sight. The girl could hear him, pacing, frantic and muttering.
“It’s true. I know your secret.”
His head flew over the baseboard, framed by two gnarled, angry hands.
“You know nothing. You are less than the cows in the field. You are just the field.”
She opened her mouth and the first syllable crawled off her tongue. It tasted like the searing heat of vomit. Her ears refused to let it into her head. She felt as though she were silent, mute. The little man screamed to cut her off and she covered the baby’s ears.
“No! No, you can not use that word. That word is my name! It is not yours to use.” He gave her names of her own, again and again, never repeating himself. She bit her lip, drawing blood.
He whirled and yelled a word she had never heard. She felt suddenly strange, as though dreaming. Beaten by strangers and left on the roadside. Nursed and raped by a wild boar. Sold into slavery by her brother but she doesn’t have a brother and she isn’t a hard worker.
She looked down and screamed. Her legs were gone. The little man stood where they used to be, smirking.
“I have more words, brazen bitch.”
Her heart stopped and sank to her stomach. She felt it throbbing, empty. She had vomited everything when the contractions started.
She opened her mouth and forgot everything except a fear that burnt her hair black and a plea that brought her heart back to her chest.
Minutes passed. She looked down at her baby. It wasn’t breathing. She pulled her hand away from its neck. Its head flopped into her blankets.
The little man was gone. There was blood on the walls.
The king stormed in, some time later. He demanded to see his child. The girl’s ears were ringing. She couldn’t hear him. He leaned over her, shook her, slapped her hard across an already red cheek.
The word came to her again, and this time everything went black.
#
She called herself the queen, and, with urging, the extended royal family took it up. She ruled a fearful kingdom. Those who hadn’t seen her had heard. She became barren, would never produce an heir. No one had the manhood to urge her from the throne.
She visited her father twice. The first time, she gave him the corpse of her baby and told him to bury it. A week later, she returned, found him drunk and the baby rotting in a corner. She told her honored guard to plug their ears. She spoke, briefly, and then returned to the castle. It took her two baths in water and one in milk to wash the stench of smoke away.
She chose Wednesdays for court days, presenting herself before her subjects. It wouldn’t do for their queen to be disfigured, though, so she sent for a local artifax. He crafted her a pair of wooden legs, wrapped in soft deer skin. Her maids help her into the throne before any of the courtiers arrive.
She judges harshly. She only knows so much.
When she is bored listening to small complaints of land and marriage, she wriggles the stumps of her legs together, watching the stilts of rumpled skin flap like fool’s motley. They make a sound like a timid grasshopper. The queen laughs to herself. No one else dares understand the joke.
Mar 2, 2009 Originally published in Full-Unit Hookup.
Click. Ambient hiss.
World Science Journal: There. That’s better. So, the question on the table—
Gregori Egorov: No, I’m not worried—
WSJ: Hang on a sec, Mister Egorov. I’ll repeat the question for the recording. With all the litigation being brought against proponents of free information, are you concerned about the legality of your project?
GE: I’m not worried. When I first set [the project] up, in my fourth year of university, I was using a random number generator. My earliest published successes, the first near- or exact-copies, were attacked by owners of the originals, the templates, as violations of copyright. And, in a sense, the copyright holders were right. I had created the numbers artificially, which, in the courts, looked very much like an analogue to me just sitting down and tracing a cartoon, say, or copying, word for word, a short story.
Then, during my post-graduate studies, a mentor suggested to me that I use pi as the basis for the project, rather than a random number generator. I would yield similar results and be legally unassailable.
WSJ: Why is that? Why use pi?
GE: Because it is theoretically an infinite, non-repeating series of digits. All possible combinations of numbers are contained with it. And I can’t be accused of creating the content I publish, since pi itself cannot be owned under the world copyright code.
WSJ: All the information is there?
GE: It’s all there. In the public domain. You just have to find it.
#
Gregori Egorov, in a black bathrobe worn to threadbare transparency, tripped down the last four steps, righted himself on the landing, and blinked in the sunlight. It was very much like coming down a flight of clammy concrete stairs and into the belly of a mad scientist’s underground lab, if you discounted the wide open curtains, children playing in a sprinkler outside, and the smell of bread in the oven. Not to mention that the only madness evident was a tendency toward anal-retentive cleanliness.
Watta was in the kitchen, cross-legged on the counter, fiddling with one of the dials on the oven. She turned and spread her arms for Gregori.
He signed, Burn, and raised his eyebrows to show it was a question.
She heaved a sigh, signed, I’m not child, and opened wide her arms again, demanding to be held.
Gregori lifted her by her armpits, blowing out a thick lungful of air. “You need to lose a few, honey,” he said. She wrapped her furry arms around his neck and craned her own to plant a wet kiss on his cheek.
“Aww, thanks, stinky,” he said. Her palms dangled down to his butt. She squeezed. “I’m sorry. You need to learn to be more gentle, my love. I haven’t recovered from last week, much less last night.” The warm saliva from her sound of distaste spattered against his ear. “Let’s get to work, huh?”
She nodded and signed, Okay, as punctuation.
Two desks ran along each side of the living room, which jutted out from the side of the house like an arm or a neck. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the whole length of the room, interrupted by wooden struts. Taped, tacked, and gum-stuck to these struts were hundreds of printouts, from legal-sized pages to slips the size of cookie fortunes. One desk faced the walkway out front, the other the back yard. Each desk had a series of flatscreen monitors, desk lamps, and small linked-paper printers at the end. It looked like the office of a team of private investigators who both struggled with seasonal affective disorder.
“What did you say you lost, ma’am?”
“My bestselling novel. The one I haven’t written yet.”
“Hang on. Let me open the blinds.”
A sheet of banner paper had been glued to the window, just above eye level, of the latter. Watta’s Desk, it read, and underneath: cat frown and a rough drawing of an eighth note. That had been relatively easy to find in the mess of pi. Watta had gone nuts over the random words that had followed the legend, and had refused to sign anything but, Cat Frown, for a week.
She scrambled up into a thick black leather chair at her station and steepled her toes. She stared at Gregori, drumming her hands on her feet; he had stuck his hands in his pockets and was now breathing deeply the warm greenhouse air. He stared out at the street, at Doctor Jema from next door walking his dog, at the two teenage girls sunbathing in the front lawn of the next house over.
Watta pushed away from the desk with her arms and rolled her chair into the back of Gregori’s knees. He stumbled, turned, and laughed. “Sorry. Nature hypnosis.” She peered around his arm and pointed at one of his terminals.
In large print, so it would be easy to read from a coffee break in the kitchen, characters were spilling in black across a white field.
@8|nmymotherisafis
Mother, signed Watta, her eyes wide enough that Gregori could see his own grin in them.
Something hit the window. Gregori leapt, banging his knee into the desk. The safety glass spidered and dented at the point of impact. Watta crawled under the desk to peer out the bottom of the window.
“Bird?” asked Gregori. Watta scooted out, behind first. Brick, she signed.
#
WSJ: Do you work alone?
GE: You know I don’t. Didn’t. That’s an intentionally leading question. I’ll answer it anyway.
WSJ: Mister Egorov, I wasn’t—
GE: Yes you were. Yes you were. It’s not like it’s a new question. I worked and I lived with Watta, my life partner. All right? She was a pygmy chimpanzee, one of the two dozen or so that were given citizenship thanks in part to the Animal riots in the twenties.
WSJ: Did you participate in those riots?
GE: I did not. I was too busy researching my dissertation.
WSJ: Which you never delivered, correct?
GE: Yeah. Didn’t seem to be much point. [Watta] and I got a modest subsidy because she’s a pre-human citizen. [laugh] She doesn’t like it when I call her that.
#
Gregori read the note again.
“This isn’t even literate,” he said, letting the crumpled paper slip to the floor. “You’re sure you didn’t see who threw it?”
Watta nodded.
“Right in front of my desktop, too,” Gregori continued, squinting through the tangled mess of white lines. “Going to have to replace the whole window.”
Behind him, Watta was listening to scraps of nonsense. Most of it sounded like static to Gregori’s ears, but occasionally there were tones, the crash of a chandelier falling, or wind shoving past the house. It was like listening to a badly scratched sound effects record.
Letting his eyes blur, he noticed that the dense center of the impact looked a bit like a mouth wide open, if he inverted his perception and let white equal black. A thin band of cracks surrounding could have been lips. A bundle of wild hair, white being white again, shot straight up from where a forehead would be before circling around to frame the cheeks, two spots of unbroken glass. A round-faced wizard, it looked like, staring straight out of the pane, conjuring Gregori’s world ex nihilo.
From Watta’s workstation came the distinctive metallic twang of Tin Pan Alley guitar. He whirled in his chair. Watta was standing on her desk, dancing in front of the radio she kept at the end.
“Watta!” He scowled at her. She flipped him the bird and grinned widely. Tired, she signed.
Sighing, Gregori turned back to the window. He couldn’t pick out the wizard’s face again.
#
Glitch. Pop.
WSJ: —were after the recipe for Guinness?
GE: I had already placed it in the public domain. It didn’t make much sense to steal it. No, I think they had a different agenda.
WSJ: What, then? Revenge?
GE: No, not revenge, though it’s not something I’d put past the Irish. No. I haven’t told this to anyone else, Jerry. But the bullet wound in Watta’s head was located directly between her eyes. It wasn’t a random shot, a shot in the literal dark.
WSJ: Why would anyone want to assassinate Watta?
GE: My partner was political. Not as a hobby, but just by virtue of her existence. She didn’t enjoy the polarization that surrounded our lives. She mostly wanted to sit around in the study with me, watching and listening; she lived for the adrenaline of discovery. Physiologically, chimpanzees are much easier to addict to the chemical. She knew she was, but she didn’t want to give it up. We went on a vacation, once, to the back yard. But the neighbor kids didn’t know how to sign to her, so I ended up turning her text displays around so she could read them from her lounge chair.
But political factions suffer from [a long pause] creative differences. There are some, it is plain to me, who, if given a One if by land, two if by sea sort of code, would promptly forget what it meant, as well as their battle cry and where the guns were buried. Countrymen to count on, they are. Now with night vision goggles.
WSJ: And what was the end result; to where did that tragedy bring you?
GE: Well, they made off with my computers, and a bunch of the archives. But big deal. I had backups, and the server is buried in a cooling system under the badminton court in the yard.
She killed at badminton. Always hit it over the fence. Don’t know why those neighbor kids never learned how to sign.
#
It was a bad day for concentration. Gregori was imagining things in the pages of text scrolling past him, now. He could see faces, hands, people in the gaps between blocks of characters, in the configuration of punctuation marks. These two periods close together made eyes, and from them poured a waterfall, pounded by slashes and capital Ls.
He gladly took a break when the workmen arrived to replace his window. They said, We won’t disturb you. We can do it all from outside.
“I’m gonna get some coffee. You want any?” he asked Watta. She shook her head to one side, not meeting his eyes. She was sulking about having to turn the radio off.
It was getting on toward evening. Gregori stood by the kitchen window as the kettle rose to a boil. The sunset was beginning, but it wasn’t worth staying around for. Not a cloud was in the sky; the boring gradient shaded from navy in the East to dust in the West, and that was it.
The kettle whistled. Gregori poured a mugful and stirred in a teaspoon of freeze-dried crystals, even though the caffeine would keep him up tonight.
Back in the living room, the workers had finished unrolling the new window and were tamping its corners into place. Gregori watched them as he tried to compose a short poem in his head. The warm coffee, his bare feet in the carpet, the workmen standing still and fading into the deepening night, it all fit somehow together. He couldn’t find how, not with his own words.
Watta screeched. Found something, she signed with flailing arms. Gregori coughed, spit coffee onto his bathrobe.
#
WSJ: How many works have you forced into the public domain in this way?
GE: Uh, only four have actually been ceded to the public. There was this novel published a few years back — Starve a Fever, by the Canadian author Bess Kashuba. That was the most recent. Last year, I think, the publishing house’s lawyers relinquished it. The print version had a typo on page eighty-eight. Mine didn’t. That was pretty funny.
WSJ: Only four?
GE: Well, yeah. It’s slow going, the process of discovery. But that’s all there is now. There’s no such thing as creativity anymore; just discovery.
#
Gregori stopped reading aloud. His tongue tasted funny to him. He made a sound through his nose that might have been a laugh if, halfway through, it hadn’t turned into a sneeze.
“That’s the end,” he said. “It trails off into gibberish after that.” From her perch in his lap, Watta gave a grunt of dismay. She fumbled around so she was facing him.
Not accurate, she signed.
“Should I publish it?” he asked.
She shook her head. Might happen, she signed small, between her folded feet. She turned to stare at the flickering images on another display. Gregori watched her fidget with the thin fur behind her ears. She heaved out a great sigh and turned again, resting her long arms on his thighs.
You didn’t cry, she signed.
“No, I didn’t. It wasn’t me,” he said.
You somewhere, she signed.
Tired, she signed from her elbows down.
Play, Gregori signed, smiling straight across his face, too tired to hold the corners up. “You pre-human citizen you.”
She leapt up onto the desk and waddled to the radio, her arms up for balance. Click. Ambient hiss. Cat Scratch Fever.
Feb 25, 2009 Originally published in Static Movement.
Eight: On the street, as our bewildered hero blinks in the sun, a roving reporter with a live feed:
“You’re an educated man, mister Set—”
“Set Zero was, at least, yes. I like to think that I am being a good steward of his talents.”
“That’s a good place to start. In the frequent interviews given in your ninth life, after your goal of eliminating your backups with inTrust was publicized, you made a clear distinction between yourself and the as-yet-inactive backups. Why is that?”
“You’ve caught me at a bad time, I’m afraid. I have just woken up and have a case of the cobwebs.”
“How do you react to the evidence that individuals who own at least five personal backups have on average a fifty percent higher life satisfaction rating than those with four or fewer?”
“May I have a moment to review my predecessor’s leavings? I’m afraid that I was given only the audio diary, and—”
“What did you leave for yourself, mister Set?”
“I would prefer to retain the rights to my predecessor’s intellectual property, for the time being.”
“Do you subscribe to the Original ideal?”
“I’m sorry, which?”
“How long can the public expect to wait for the completion of your quest?”
Set Eight, with a smile, “I’d quite like a cup of coffee.”
#
Seven: As a secondary, more idle curiosity Set wondered how many different ways he could die. So far he had suffocated himself inside a plastic bag and leapt from a moving train as it passed over a trestle. There were still a half-dozen dirt naps left to take before he satisfied his primary curiosity. If he could manage not to repeat his predecessors’ methods, then so much the better.
The only thing was, he might not know it if he did. Memories only flow in one direction and each backup could only remember up until the time of its creation. One could just as soon ask a river to gush uphill than expect Set to awaken each morning after death with any experience of life, or death, beyond the basic template, the state he had been in when he first backed up.
The backups were stored at various havens around the world, warehouses position so as to be optimally safe from flood, tsunami, eruption, and earthquake. Set Zero, an adjunct professor at a modest American college, had been able to afford eight such backups through his school’s insurance policy, with the option of stacking more if he so chose.
Set Seven could remember arriving at inTrust’s satellite office. He remembered checking in with the scowling young nurse who verified that he understood the risks and would not hold the company liable in the event of any disasters arising from his monumental vanity. He remembered the liquid diet they put him on for two days while the chips were inserted and the unique patterns of his brain were archived. After that, all he could remember was waking up that morning in a colorless apartment with a migraine, a craving for a cup of coffee, and a message from Set Zero playing like an unbroken daydream until he gave it his full attention.
Set Zero had had thirteen good years of life without dipping into his stock of selves, apparently. In the message, he attempted to justify, to himself, his decision to tear through his backups, to live once again on the cusp of death. Set Seven smiled; Zero had awkward phrasing and a familiar crack in his voice. He must have really meant it. It was evident that Eight had gone along with the idea and a few minutes on the news feeds told him how, but not exactly why. It seemed Set was a bit of a celebrity; there was even an informal game underway to try and find his next backup before he did away with himself again.
Set was in no special hurry to die. He got dressed and strolled outside. “London,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve always wanted to visit London.”
It was a lot like Seattle, only people spoke faster.
#
Six: “I thought I’d find you here. When I heard that your next was in Seattle—”
Set looked up. The stranger had long hair, expertly cut, and a coat of stubble so thin it looked to have been painted on.
“I’m sorry,” said Set. “I know you, don’t I?”
The stranger took a step forward, edging onto Set’s horizon of comfort. “I was Zero’s friend. My name is Gunter.”
“It’s nice to see you again, Gunter,” said Set with a smile. Gunter hesitated a moment — and Set thought he looked like a man trying to come up with way to explain to the neighbor children that he just ran over their cat — then he shoved out a hand to be shaken. Set took it and gestured for Gunter to join him on the bench, which he did.
“Did I come here a lot?” asked Set.
“This is where we did our guard stint,” said Gunter.
“I was in the guard?” asked Set. He turned and tried to face Gunter but a park bench is not an ideal place for a conversation. Gunter was staring out at Puget Sound and answered with a nod. “That doesn’t sound like me at all,” said Set.
“You might have been drunk,” said Gunter. Then, “I’ve been reading a lot about you. You never struck me as a wasteful guy.”
“Is that what I’m doing? being wasteful?”
Gunter nodded. A seagull hopped over and pecked at his shoes. “Did you leave yourself a message?” he asked, kicking the gull away.
“I fail to see how it’s wasteful,” said Set. “I’m an organ- and tissue-donor, after all.”
“You jumped fifteen storeys, the first time. There were no organs left.”
“Granted, but the gun left everything below the neck just fine, and asphyxiation doesn’t harm a thing. Well,” he added, “Apart from the obvious.” Gunter ought to have at least smiled.
Instead, he said, “I never liked your sense of humor.” Here came the push off down a racing slope. “I hated the way you talked down to my brother when we were in the guard, and I hated that I laughed about it with you afterward. I couldn’t stand it that night you tried to get him drunk, and it pisses me off that you don’t have the scar anymore. Hell, I even think you’re ugly.” He scowled and let the words fly out to sea with nothing there to echo back against.
The gull had returned and was pecking at Gunter’s shoe laces. He jerked, like a patient having his reflexes tested, and sent the bird hop-skipping away. Then he almost smiled.
“I’m sorry,” said Set. “None of this means much to me.”
Gunter shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Why did you come back here?”
“This is where my body—”
“No, I mean right here.”
Set thought for a moment. “I don’t honestly know,” he said.
Gunter stood up, showing Set his profile. He jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched as though expecting rain. “Why don’t you stop playing your life like a video game, yeah?” Then, “I know why you came back here. Your body wanted to go back to the scene of the crime. This is where you killed him. Remember?”
Set tried to protest as Gunter walked away, but “It’s a nice view,” was the strongest he could come up with.
“I’m notifying the police,” said Gunter over his shoulder. “Go to hell.”
#
Five: The librarian was an old man. His knuckles were large with arthritis; he smelled like pipe smoke and baby powder. Leaning close, he tapped the screen. “Right here’s the ones you want, son,” he said.
Set thanked him and apologized again for not knowing his way around the new reference system. The librarian shrugged and smiled and shuffled off to finish the morning chores that Set had interrupted.
The particulars may have changed, but the basics were the same. Set did a search on his name and sat back to read. Hours passed. His eyes started crawling with concentration spots. There had been plenty of mundane events in his life, citations by his employer, that sort of thing, but there was one article of more interest. It was dated two years previous and told of a murder on the quay for which there had been no arrest. The victim had been named Halt, and he had been active in Seattle’s gay community. He was survived by one brother. Set was quoted with a vague witness statement, saying he was close to the victim.
“When did I realize I was gay?” Set wondered aloud. The librarian ambled back over holding a hard-copy newspaper. Set looked him up and down, tried to find him attractive. Probably not my type, he thought.
“You made page three,” said the librarian, offering the paper. Set took it and read. One of his bodies had been found in a Peruvian drainage ditch, missing its head and liver.
“How many you got left, then?” asked the librarian.
“Zero didn’t make a backup in Peru,” said Set.
#
Four: “Would you like anything?”
“Thank you, mister Set, but no. May I record your opinion of the Originals?”
“The original who? Isn’t there a band—”
“The phrase is used to denote individuals who claim an ideological stance in line with the One Life manifesto, published three years before your first death.”
Passing up the chance to make a snide remark. “I love a good manifesto. How does it read?”
“I don’t have permission to quote verbatim, mister Set, but I can inform you of the basics. The author desired to preserve original life. Many of the author’s philosophies originated in eighteenth-century aristocratic sensibilities, though such criticisms have gone unmet. Each human, the author argued, is allowed one life, and one life only. The merits of medical transplant procedures are espoused in an addendum.”
“Fascinating,” said Set.
“Thank you for your time, mister Set. I have won the tee-shirt.”
#
Three: A sunrise in Saskatchewan is instant, like a switch being thrown. There are no valleys or crevices for stalwart bands of night to hide in. Set had to shield his eyes. He had woken up at three in the morning, which seemed like an odd time for his predecessor to die. Periodically, he checked the news, but his death notice hadn’t hit, yet.
He was waiting for businesses to open so he could get a cup of coffee. It seemed like a very long wait. The small cell he had awoken in belonged to inTrust, and they would evict him after he felt he had full control of his functions. He had been furnished with feed access, a cot, in case he felt weak, and a window to help him remember where he was.
“So, I’m number three,” he said to himself. He let Zero’s daydream message play again and felt a shiver run up his back. There was something Zero hadn’t said, Set was certain, something he had hidden from his descendents. Set remembered back in grade school when his father hadn’t let him come home after classes, had him play in the yard while he and Set’s mother zipped back and forth in front of the living room window like ducks in shooting gallery. When they finally let him come inside, the air smelled like Lysol and there was something that looked like blood on the carpet.
And when he asked about his dog, Bones, they said he ran away.
Set wondered what had really happened, and if Zero had ever learned. On an impulse, he checked the feeds; his father had died four years ago. “Dropping like fruit out of season,” said Set.
There was a knock at the door. When set didn’t immediately rise to answer it, there was a second, and then someone on the outside coughed and said, “It’s the police, mister Set. Open up.”
Faintly bemused, like when a student asks a tough question, Set opened the door. There were two officers, one with his gun drawn, and a detective. The detective looked as if he were a couple weeks past retirement. His badge was pinned on his lapel, identifying him as detective Hyssop. He saw Set read his badge, so he didn’t bother introducing himself.
“May we come in, mister Set?”
“Oh, well, it’s not my property, exactly, but please.” Set stepped aside. As they stepped in, the other officer holstered his gun, but didn’t snap the clasp. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you coffee,” said Set.
Detective Hyssop smiled like lightning and coughed like distant thunder. “I have to ask if you are aware, through natural or artificial means, of the warrant issued for your arrest. Just in case,” he added to the officers.
It sounded as if it needed a strong reply, but all Set came up with was, “No,” and a widening of the eyes.
Detective Hyssop sighed and gestured to one of the officers. The officer removed a length of zip-tie from his pocket and stepped up to Set. “Put your wrists together, out in front, please.” Set did so. The sound the tie made was like corduroy pants.
“You’re under arrest,” said Hyssop, but he was cut off by his violent cough. He drew a misfolded handkerchief from his pocket and spit dark phlegm into it.
“That’s a nasty cough,” said Set.
“Call it habit,” said Hyssop. “You’re under arrest, and have been charged with the murder of Halt Greenaway of Seattle, Washington.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Set.
“There is significant evidence to the contrary, mister Set.”
“I didn’t do it, detective Hyssop—” he pronounced it incorrectly “—because I was just born. I’ve never set foot out of this room.”
Detective Hyssop sighed and leaned back against the wall. He rubbed his eyes as though tired and tried to suppress another cough. “Jonathan Set is charged with the murder of Halt Greenaway. Are you Jonathan Set?”
“That is my name.” Set wasn’t the type to stand up to authority, but he was feeling petulant as a newborn. He stiffened his back and tried to stare detective Hyssop down.
“You’re under arrest, mister Set. Do you understand?”
“What if my name were Lee Harvey Oswald, detective?”
The officers were settling into a stance that suggested they would be here for a while. They folded their arms over their chests and bent their knees slightly.
“Are you a religious man?” asked Hyssop.
“No,” said Set.
“No, you wouldn’t be,” said Hyssop. “Got to tell you, I don’t think I’d be here if you were. You people are filling the earth right up with your carbon copies, and each copy means what? means that there’s that much more room for the soul to spread around in. Just my personal theory. But you keep dying, and you keep living, and you’re making heaven too fucking crowded.”
Set felt as if he had been called in front of the principal. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
They took him out to the car and stuck him in the back seat. Hyssop and one of the officers rode with him, the other officer following in an unmarked car. Set tried to order his thoughts, tried to uncover some hint within himself about what his predecessor’s may have done. It was hard to concentrate, because Hyssop kept coughing.
The officer turned and asked, “When you goin’ in?”
“Tomorrow,” said Hyssop, spitting. “Tomorrow. Lungs of a thirty year-old.”
“Nice,” said the officer.
“Yeah.” Hyssop twisted around in his seat to peer at Set. “What do you think about that, son?”
“Congratulations,” said Set.
Hyssop made a crooked grin and nodded as though he had scored a victory. “You know what you remind me of?” he asked. “My son had a cat when he was a boy. Stupidest damn thing I ever saw. Chewed on mouse traps. Stuck its claw in a wall socket. It was dumber’n the kid, I swear. Last straw was when it climbed up the tree out front. Tried for ten minutes to get it down, then I said, Screw it and left it up there. Made a noise like you wouldn’t believe. Too damn curious for its own good.”
They were driving into the sun. Even squinting, Set couldn’t see a thing. “I have faith,” he said, just because he knew that word would summon up a cough in Hyssop. “No idea what I’m going to see when I get to the top,” he went on. “But it has to be something worth seeing. I’m a very trustworthy man, and I’ve known some.” The sun disappeared behind a warehouse that looked as if it might house a space shuttle. Set could see inTrust’s logo, the daisy-chained stick figures holding hands, plastered on the side. “What are we doing here?” he asked.
The car stopped and Hyssop got out. “Welcome to your new home.” He chuckled. The officer opened Set’s door and helped him get out. As Set stood, he saw the officer’s holster, still unbuttoned. He didn’t say, You’re not the police; he guessed they knew already. He felt a flash of anger at his predecessors and seized onto it. The heat in his brain was quickly transformed into the warm gun in his hands. He broke away from the officer and tried to run. He tripped over his own feet and ended up on his back in the dust. The officer was running at him and Hyssop had turned to watch.
Set fumbled the gun around, barrel toward his head, and put his thumb on the trigger. “Someone else’s problem,” he said. Let the cat get down on its own. One step at a time. That’s how you move mountains. As much as you can lift, one load at a time.
#
Two: Set listened to Zero’s message and then opened his eyes. He was lying down and there was a bare fluorescent tube crackling above him. He tried to raise a hand to shield his brow, by found he could not move either of his arms. His legs were similarly restrained. He craned his neck, felt the vertebrae pop, and looked down at himself. He was spread-eagled on a bed, nylon straps looped around his wrists and ankles. There was an indistinct shape near the door of the tiny room. Set could feel his pupils contract against the light.
“Welcome to earth, mister Set,” came a voice from the shape. Set blinked to bring the shape into focus. It was a middle-aged woman, slightly overweight, wire glasses on her nose, the pencil-pushing type. She was carrying a clipboard.
“Why am I tied down?” asked Set.
“You’ve been belligerent,” said the woman. “I’m sorry.”
“I apologize,” said Set. “Did I hurt anyone?”
“No,” said the woman. She took a step forward and clutched the clipboard like a weapon. “I work for inTrust Corporation, and I wondered if you would be willing to take a look at a couple of forms.”
Set fumbled his tongue around in his mouth. It felt thick and fuzzy and in desperate need of coffee. “Is this the first time you have asked me?”
“No, sir,” said the woman with a rueful smile.
“What are they?” asked Set. The woman brought her clipboard over and positioned it in front of Set’s face.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Back a little,” said Set. The forms came into focus. Set read quickly. “Cloning authorization,” he said. Then, “This is backdated. Two years?” The woman said nothing. “What am I doing here?” asked Set.
“You’re a difficult man to get a hold of,” said the woman. “Like a greased pig.” She pulled the clipboard out of reach. “I’ve listened to your message,” she said. “It’s nothing; it’s not poetic or religious. I can’t understand why you’ve put seven bodies in the morgues, nor can my superiors.” She took off her classes and cleaned them, scowling at the grime. Her countenance lifted when she slid the frame back over her ears. “Now, I’m afraid, you’re going to have to be patient.”
“For what am I waiting?”
The woman looked as though she were about to leave without answering, but she paused on the threshold and said, “To be born again,” and Set could tell she had to cut the laughter out.
She left the lights on. Set tried tugging at his restraints, but there was no give to them. He listened to Zero’s message again, to the compelling conviction that he didn’t know his vocal chords could muster.
One more left, he thought. They’ll probably have him under guard as well. I wish I could record a message for him. I’d say, Sorry I dumped this in your lap. Nothing I could do. Seemed the most appropriate action at the time.
He debated trying to choke himself to death, trying to swallow his tongue, but it wouldn’t pull far enough back. He wondered if he could make himself vomit, but after a few minutes of flexing his stomach muscles all he had was heartburn.
He kind of wanted to laugh. They wanted his permission to make additional clones, to be farmed off as organ donors for those who didn’t want to spring on a backup, or who didn’t want to lose a few minor years of experience.
A few minor years. He was reminded of the time he spent three years in college hot on the heels of a girl named Lace. He signed up for the classes she attended; he tried so hard to make her laugh that she actually did. She hated smoking, so he quit for a while. She liked going to church on Wednesday evenings, so he gave it a shot and quite liked the music. He knew, just knew, that a little perseverance would go a long way, and it ended up going five miles to the bar to pick her up one night after her ride bailed, and then six miles back to her apartment, twenty-three steps up to her room, and ten feet to her bed.
Set realized he was smiling. He pulled the corners of his mouth down; they were sore with effort. That wasn’t me, he said. That’s just context. I am Set Two, newborn. There was a convergence in the past, but it was like a myth, a story to enlighten purpose in the present.
He remembered Lace once saying, Faith is being sure of what is hoped for and certain of what remains unseen. That did the trick. He felt his throat clench and bile crept into his mouth. A flex and twist of the body and a whole wave sloshed up. He coughed and choked and some of it came out his nose.
He held his breath as long as he could.
#
One: The body had been shipped, upon receipt of payment, to an aluminum building in Peru where two surgeons with identical accents removed its unconscious brain, just in case, and then took his liver for an elderly economist who was too much in love with vodka. The surgeons had no outstanding requests for the other organs, so they dumped the body in an irrigation ditch where it floated into a field of hops and was spotted by the farmer’s son.
#
Zero: It was an explosion, a burst ill-aimed and wide. Seven bullets, four went into the bushes, three punched an Orion’s belt across Halt’s chest. He fell, twisting on his knees, his weight jerking front-to-back. He landed face-down on the cement and coughed. The gunman — he had a wispy mustache and couldn’t have been more than eighteen — took two running steps down the path, then stopped, slipped, came back for Halt’s wallet. He ripped out the twenty bucks in cash that was supposed to be for dinner and then ran off, not looking back, just like a coward.
Like a coward, thought Set, and crawled out of his hiding place. He had spotted Halt from a distance and had slowed, just because he liked to look at him. He had thin German features, and was trying to grow out his hair. Just as Set was about to raise an arm and holler, the young gun had slouched up to Halt, hand out, asking for a light. Halt had shaken his head. The kid’s hand came out again, this time with a folded twenty in it. Halt had smiled — wide German mouth could carry a smile a hundred yards — and again shaken his head. The kid’s hand disappeared and came out with the gun and Set had leapt into the bushes.
Like a coward, though Set, along the path of least resistance. He rushed to Halt’s side and wasn’t the first one there. “I’m a doctor,” he said, which had never quite been true. He got down on his knees and looked into Halt’s eyes. One was open, one was fluttering like a butterfly shot down by a child’s water toy.
The police came and took his statement and then he tried to sleep. Almost fifteen years in the same job, same city, same bed. It had never been comfortable. Apathy had left him tired and depressed, a parasite emotion. Set had realized this; he was a smart guy. Joining the guard for a couple weekends a month had been good for him. There, he had met Gunter and Halt and their beer nights became Set’s best memories for a time.
One night, after Gunter had passed out, Set and Halt sat on the bar’s front steps and talked about the goals of their lives. Halt wanted to be a painter, and Set wanted to stop being a teacher. Halt said, You can do anything you want, because your brain is so damn big. Set said, Oh yeah? Halt said, Absolutely. You have to trust a brain that big and beautiful. Set grinned and let his head fall under all that weight. Halt leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.
There was a memorial service for Halt back in Spokane, where his folks lived. He had had no backups; he blew all his money on paint and canvas. Before boarding the train over the Cascades, Set went to inTrust’s Seattle offices and recorded the message for his descendents; they provided the service, but it wasn’t in high demand, since most of the deaths they dealt in were sudden.
“Aren’t you curious?” he said into the microphone. “I am. I have to do this, and I hope you’ll do it with me. There is no tang in this life without the risk of loss. I can not communicate in words what I hope you will understand. I have faith you will understand. Who knows?” He bit off a laugh. “It could be fun.” It wasn’t quite what he wanted to say. The recorder clicked off. “I’m sorry,” he added.
On the train, he had a beer in the dining car and then went back to one of the sleeping cars as they passed over the mountains. He forced the door open; the wheels threw up steam and locked. A bubble of questions and mild screams grew and burst and forced Set right on out.
They were on a bridge. The chasm was deep and dark, like hell, but cold and fresh, like heaven.
It seemed poetic. It seemed fair.
It seemed easy.
Feb 24, 2009 Originally published in Technoccult.
Difficulty: no giving up.
Hard to write, feet not dextrous, ha. Five senses, five simultaneous inputs. Synthesize three for single output.
Public radio address — pen in hand, now, foot delicate enough for Braille —through the aural inputs. Twelve stranded atop house in flood. Restate. Twelve stranded atop house in flood.
Unfaithful translation of Feynmann to bump-grids now playing underfoot — odd, can spool faster across arch of sole than could under fingers. Inaccurate biographical information; was samba, not bossa nova. Synthesize: Twelve stranded atop samba club in Brazillian flood. Strict accuracy. Twelve stranded atop bossa nova club.
Optical dissociation shunted in favor of rapid focus swap. Looped video (35mm archive, poor condition, no blues, missing audio) of child crying in backseat as imposing figure in black pea-coat recedes to vanishing point through rear window. Twelve stranded atop bossa nova club, abandoned by rescuers. Offset on repeat. Mode same. Twelve abandoned, would-be rescuers fleeing.
Second focus: novel, thriller, yellow paper, pocket-sized, inappropriate ellipses signifying difficult drama. Cheapens the situation. Twelve stranded atop bossa nova club; rescue attempts called off; all the world holds its breath.
The hard two, now. Burnt diesel scent from open vent. Raw seafood from restaurant kitchens two floors down. Nothing discrete, but context fills the role here of isolation. Twelve stranded atop bossa nova club; rescue attempts called off; all the world holds its breath. A fishing vessel, chugging powerfully against the flow, making its way to the survivors against the command of—
Collect and synthesize. I shall bend — not break — the scientific methods. A fishing boat is coming [inappropriate ellipsis].
Been up too long and my sinuses are draining down the back of my throat in a hot sheet that tastes of metal, of the tin lip of cheap beer. Twelve stranded atop bossa nova club; rescue attempts called off; all the world holds its breath. The survivors have exhausted their fresh water supply, and are now rationing tins of beer.
Extrapolate, for the threads of story are like shavings of gold, and to procure a true representative sample there must be much to enter in the crucible: We have seen close ups of the faces of the children, and their fear is solid through the wires and waves. All those housewives between their television sets and ironing boards catch the news flash; students have their classroom monitors switched on; the names of the children are more memorable than those of the old man drinking beer, of the mistress of the club in her simple red dress. Weather conditions prohibit airlift. Cameraman with optical zoom unsteady, drops camera when twisted by sobs.
Hop one: sobbing.
Hop two: That time I took a lungful of asbestos dust and lost the will to stand and faced the wall and coughed until my eyes hurt and the poison particles had turned to mud against my cheeks.
Two hops only. Not good.
In an infinite universe, there must be an infinite number of stories that haven’t got a thing to do with me. In a possibly finite universe, there must be a story, a star somewhere the light of which will never touch me, and never come around again.
The thing is, the problem is, I’m shut up in memories. The real sixth sense, used to navigate a house moved out of twenty years before, used to evaluate the vibrancy of a color, to add the relativity, without which we are seeing new things every day, smelling, tasting, hearing, feeling new things every second of the day.
I want to leave this place. I want to be alone, but here there is no alone. Downstairs, the cook shatters a pan of boiled sugar and his children scramble for the flakes. Upstairs, two women scream. On either side of me are people breathing, breathing heavy, phlegmy gulps. I can not be alone. I can not find the story that has none of me. I can make these successive approximations, Riemann sums for solitude, diminishing myself. But not with two hops. That doesn’t even get close to nothing.
I could write myself a story of escape; even I wouldn’t believe it. Null hop.
Feb 23, 2009 Originally published in the Goodbye, Darwin anthology.
It was not a night to spare expense. The firm had successfully defended against their twenty-fifth anti-trust suit earlier that afternoon and, to celebrate, the senior partners had brought out all the silver, and had sprung for the champagne. The party went through the natural life cycle of this sort of office get-together, starting with the tentative first introductions and flirtations, growing into the comfortable din of a dozen concurrent conversations, lapsing into silence as guests individually realized they had nothing more to say, and then dissipating as the elderly and the far too young slouched out under heavy felt coats and identical flat-brimmed hats. By three in the morning, the only ones left in the offices were the middle-aged, those not yet over the hill but right at the summit, and one young lawyer who wanted to ingratiate himself.
The brandy came out, as did the cigars, and soon, by the alcohol heat and Havana exhales, the men were pimpled with sweat over their laser-shaven cheeks. Their ties already were loosened, so they began unbuttoning their shirts and pumping the fabric over their chests like bellows, laughing and snorting and desperate not to fall asleep, for to sleep would be a waste of time.
When it got too hot to move, they started burning money. Everybody chipped in, emptying their pockets of chits until there was a pile the size of a pumpkin on the table between them. They took turns, as a family might take turns opening presents on Christmas morning, not out of a desire to see joy flash across their coworker’s face, but to build up suspense, to revel in the fascination.
The young lawyer was last in the circle. He had never burned with these men before. He stayed quiet, some small part of him fearing that the only reason he was still there was that they hadn’t noticed him yet. He laughed at the right times, though never too loudly, but didn’t say much of anything that he came up with on his own. He stared with the others as each man in the circle placed a chit against his temple and pressed, sending recorded electronic signatures through his brain, which scrambled to adapt to the new information and, quick as you can tell your lips to smile, copied wave for wave the emotion held inside the chit.
These were mostly wonders, joys, a few lusts, which were declining in value as the market realized that lust was not necessary to fabricate. It was almost the young lawyer’s turn. He watched the features of the man to his right settle and soften until the skin was no good for holding back tears. The man had grabbed the lone nostalgia.
“Here Johnny,” said the man on the young lawyer’s left, passing him a chit. Johnny grinned to show willing, took it, and pressed it to his temple, his sweat sealing the connection. He didn’t see the fist-shielded chuckles of the few men whose artificial emotions had already wound down, and, though he heard the humor, it didn’t sound out of place. He shot the chit, using up its charge, rendering it worthless.
Johnny Cousin wasn’t stupid. He was going places. He was a capable lawyer; he spoke to juries with a confidence he couldn’t find tonight. He had risen from assistantship to associate to trial lawyer in just a few years, and his first solo case was this coming Tuesday. He wasn’t stupid. There are plenty of gullible people who aren’t stupid.
The emotion hit him like a bullet — that is to say so quickly that he could neither identify nor examine it. He pitched forward and vomited. His spine crawled with the glares, the hunting focus of some invisible creature. He scrambled to his feet, slipping on the puke, and tried to run. He tripped over the armchair of a laughing attorney and fell into a crouch. His hands smelled like acid and alcohol.
“What’d you give him?” someone asked. “Oh shit, that’s hilarious. You’ve got one of those? It’s like a food stamp, brother.”
“I found it in the gutter,” someone else said.
Johnny sobbed into his hands and twisted up against a wall. There was a window. He slithered away from it, settling into a corner, his fingers laced over his eyes, too afraid to either open or close them.
“Should get this on camera. You got a camera?”
The dramatics were over, though. Johnny’s terrified mind calmed like an ocean, a small derivative, the waves still present just less forceful. He pulled his hands away from his eyes and focused on the other men and their tucked-up playground leers.
Johnny wiped his chin on his sleeve; the shirt was ruined anyhow. “You bastards,” he said, lightly, as though he were in on the joke. “You royal bastards.” And, far removed from his grudging laugh, he was thinking, And that’s what he feels? My god. My god. What have I done?
#
“You receive a pension for your son’s service, do you not?”
“For when he is released, ma’am, yes,” said Johnny. Throughout the last couple of days he had been unable to stop thinking about how he had felt that night. Memory stands apart from pain, the same as a noun stands apart from the thing it represents. Still, the memory was potent and made his sinuses hurt. He hadn’t been focused on his job, on the preparations for his trial on Tuesday. Some of his coworkers, the ones who had been there that night, had come up to him and nudged him in his ribs, joked about the look on his face, pulled their own faces into rude caricatures. Johnny’s reserve of humor ran out in mere hours, and after that he just replied with, Yeah, that was great.
“And why do you want to terminate his employment prematurely?” Johnny was standing in front of the desk of a secretary to one of the senior partners; several steps removed from power, but he could feel it, the ability to effect a change, pulsing in the conditioned air.
The secretary was leaning forward on her desk, elbows on the blotter, her thin glasses centered on her eyes. She was young, or looked it; no more than a couple years older than Johnny. Her expression invited him to fill the silence; he chose to fill it with excuses.
“I didn’t realize what I was doing. The tests said he gave strong reactions and would be ideal for the mint, but—”
“So you signed him over. Terror, you said?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. The secretary nodded as if hearing from him a condemnation in that one syllable and agreeing with it, though not without sympathy. She pressed a finger into her right ear, the better to hear from the microspeaker embedded there.
“Excuse me for just one moment, mister Cousin.” The secretary left through a door behind her desk. The door clicked shut. Johnny thought of shutting doors, of putting the past in its place and locking it there, of dark impenetrable wood behind which is hidden whatever you please, of the room in the corner of a house, out of sight so the mind can gradually flush its memories away.
The door opened; the secretary breezed back to her desk. She swiveled in her chair, settling it in the right position, then smiled.
“Did you know that they now manipulate their dreams, as well? So, in essence, they are working twenty-four hours a day. That must be . . . terrible.” The secretary smiled again. “Or terrific, depending on who you are, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
Where Johnny would have rustled a sheet of paper or glanced at his watch, she fixed him on the two points of her eyes and waited for her next thought to form into words. “And your wife?” she said.
“We’re no longer together,” said Johnny. “I have full legal custody.”
“Good. That will make this less complicated.”
“You can do something?”
“We can do something, mister Cousin. But it will require an effort on your part, as well. You like your work, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Johnny, and it was partly true. He liked what the job allowed him to do; that is, he liked attending parties, and he liked being a part of the winning team, and he liked coming home way too late to a bottle of bourbon and a house, built large so as to enclose the maximum amount of silence, and with silence, comfort.
The work itself was a tool, a commodity, something for him to sell in exchange for every docile fantasy he had.
“You have done a satisfactory job in the past few months. It hasn’t escaped the notice of the senior partners.”
“Thank you,” said Johnny.
“Your first solo is on Tuesday, is it not?”
“That’s correct,” said Johnny.
“Good. The senior partners would like you to throw it.”
“What? Why?”
“I hardly think I need tell you, mister Cousin, that in some instances there can come profit from loss.” The secretary was smiling; her eyes said, I know you really are smart enough to know that, and Johnny almost believed her. An expression like that could have sold cars; it was so full of camaraderie, of earnest kinship born of shared experience.
“No,” replied Johnny.
“Good. Do not turn it into a mistrial. Weaken your case, discredit your own witnesses, hem and haw to the jury. Make a few bad jokes.” Her voice had taken on the mad Mosaic timbre of someone dispensing commandments from on high. Behind her words, Johnny could hear the low whine of the speaker in her ear. One of the senior partners telling her what to say; this woman existed only to keep supplicants at arm’s length from the power. Johnny was not a praying man, but right then he wondered how frustrating it must have been to accompany each prayer with a sacrifice, an extra wing of potency, without which the prayer would flutter helplessly in the mezzanine, easy prey for circling doubts, far removed from the shrouded presence of an Old Testament god.
Johnny almost bowed as he left. On the way out, he passed a platinum reproduction of Winged Victory of Thrace. He reflected on the meeting — his knees shaking as they had his first time addressing a judge — and what it would cost him, which was, to his estimation, fairly large. A handful of terrors made a plastic chatter in his jacket pocket. He reflected, misshapen, in winged victory.
#
The guys in the office gave Johnny pats on the back and buck up pep talks. Everyone stopped by to congratulate him on a job well done, too bad the twelve went in for the other guy, but sometimes that can’t be helped. Johnny was tired and gracious and said, Just gotta get back up on the horse, he couldn’t guess how many times. The distractions came at fifteen minute intervals, sometimes the same guys more than once. No hard feelings, said the guy who had slipped him the terror that night, and it wasn’t a question. No hard feelings, said Johnny, patting the chits in his pocket.
He was annoyed at the distractions, but he didn’t know what he would have done without them. He couldn’t concentrate on the work; his monitor kept deforming every time he blinked, waves of misguided electrons sheeting to the bottom. Somewhere in the office was a crying baby, and the susurrus of its client mother hushing it up, her sibilance matching the disturbed frequency of Johnny’s screen.
His phone rang, throwing off the baby’s howl, the mother’s whisper. He answered it.
“Mister Cousin,” said the secretary on the other end. “Have you been keeping up with the news?”
He hadn’t been. Preparing for his case had been more important in the way that circumvents any method of prioritizing; but even without the thrown case, he wasn’t much of a news hound. The things he needed to know filtered through other people to his ears, and at the end of the day he went home to a quiet house with no TV. He said as much, aware that outside of his head it sounded like rambling.
“Nine days ago, a vigilante group raided the Pac-Nor mint in Bellingham. The group’s apparent aim was to liberate the staff. Your son was one of those liberated.”
“Where is he, now?”
“Local police conducted an area search. You should read it for yourself. They turned up Contentment—” referring to the kid by the emotion she was tapped for “—huddled in an alleyway trying to wrap a sheet of rotten drywall around herself. The others didn’t turn up in the county.”
After a compliment on a job well done — which felt to Johnny no more or less than the pats on the back — the secretary hung up, saying she would leave him to it, whatever it was. His son was nine days gone from the mint. How far can a kid run in nine days? How far can a kid — who has been stuck in his own mind for fifteen years and whose only experience with running has come from escaping the monsters that visited inside injected fever dreams — go in nine days?
If it had been me, Johnny realized, I would have gone until my lungs caved in.
Rubbing his temples, he caught up on the news. As it turned out, some of the kids had gone home, authorities assuming the vigilantes had told them where to go. Anger burned a tree house down and was in custody. The mints didn’t want the kids back, now; they were spoiled goods, once earthbound and now released into the great wide unknown. The air they had known would never taste the same again.
Johnny cut out early and sped home. He pulled onto his street with the sun in his eyes and saw the silhouette of his house undamaged and was relieved.
#
Grady pulled up out front in his near-silent car; Johnny wouldn’t have noticed had he not been waiting for the man. It was a couple of weeks later, and Johnny still hadn’t decided what to do about his son, whom he had taken to calling Trey, thanks to the circling strange abstraction of the brain which turns a word around until its syllables overlap and its meaning takes second seat to the sounds themselves.
He strolled down the front walk to greet Grady. Grady wasn’t from around here; he wasn’t an American. He spoke English haltingly and with a grammar all his own. He made you feel as though every gap in communication was your fault for not speaking clearly, while your brain protested that it was his fault for fouling up the language in his head. Still, he was the best private investigator in the area and he had worked with Johnny’s firm on a number of occasions, so Johnny at least knew him by sight, as well as by his reputation.
He told himself he was collecting information, in order to make an informed decision, and couldn’t help feeling as though he were betraying someone, or, more accurately, some thing, some wordless ideal. By not upping stakes and running to Bellingham? he asked himself. Unreasonable, misguided, emotional. Came the response: how better to find your son, who has lived his whole life unreasonably, without guidance, submerged in an emotion much more powerful — therefore more valuable — than the paternal instinct.
“Nice car,” said Johnny as he extended his hand to Grady. Grady took it, then released it as though he had decided not to shake after all. He turned and examined his car from hood to trunk, then returned his attention to Johnny.
“Yes,” he said. “I enjoy a good car.”
“What is it? A Freya roadster, right? Love the color.”
“Good running,” said Grady. “Take me inside.” He was holding a black leather briefcase in one hand. He used it to gesture at Johnny’s house.
“Right. Please, come in,” said Johnny.
Grady went immediately to the dining room table and sat, opening his briefcase and laying out a series of contracts and forms for Johnny to sign. Johnny, meanwhile, got himself a drink.
“Want a drink?” he asked.
Grady waved his negative. “For the driving,” he said. “Sign your life,” he said, tapping his finger on the nearest sheet of paper, then pulling a pen from his breast pocket and repeating the gesture.
“Excuse me?” Johnny took a sip of his drink and sat down opposite Grady.
“Sign your life,” said the PI. “For payment.”
Johnny couldn’t quite place Grady’s accent. There were the rolled Rs, the swallowed vowels of Russia; but he also tended to emphasize the second syllable, as Germans or Scotsmen do. The man’s looks didn’t clear anything up. His hair was gray, but looked as though it could have been artificially so. His eyebrows were triangular, pointing upwards, shadowing his eyes. His face was smooth and square and carried the sort of contemplative neutral expression that once upon a time may have caused swoons in the girls of his native land, wherever that was.
“Sign my life?” said Johnny. Grady stared at him, licked his lips, blinked, returned to staring. Johnny bent and started reading the contracts. When he was halfway through, Grady spoke.
“I am going from America,” he said. “Tell the word around. After your money. I am going.” Johnny kept reading. “Stupid America,” Grady went on. “Sensitive to light, to shadow, to food. Babies that cry. And worthless money.”
“Worthless,” said Johnny, glancing meaningfully around his sleek unsullied rooms.
“Gold is worthless,” said Grady. “No bullets to be made, no walls will stand. Too soft. So is your new money. Worthless.”
“Is that why you ask for so much of it?” Johnny had finished reading the contracts. Grady grinned, boxy teeth shoving his lips apart. He replied something about moving that Johnny didn’t understand and let disappear without response. He began inking his initials and names over the sheets of the contract.
When he was finished, Grady collected his copies and snapped them into the briefcase. Johnny wrote up a bank authorization, asking, “What do you want it in?”
“Wonder,” said Grady. Johnny made it so and handed over the note.
“Remember,” he said. “I don’t want him to know that his dad is looking for him. I mean, I don’t know what he’d do. I don’t want him to run. Just tell me where— just tell me if he’s all right and where he is.”
Grady nodded. “It’s in the contract.” He let himself out.
Johnny sat hunched forward on his couch, elbows on his knees. He listened to Grady’s car purr off. After a while, he got up and, shoving the loose contract aside, opened his own briefcase and caught up on a little work, scribbling notes with one hand while the other made plastic chirps with the terror in his pocket.
#
Three weeks later, Grady was sitting on Johnny’s couch, sipping a water. Johnny was sitting across from him on the corner of the coffee table, flipping through the pages of notes and photographs that Grady had brought with him.
“Oliver Kyle Cousin,” said Johnny.
“He names himself O.K.,” said Grady.
“He kept the surname.”
Johnny looked at the face of his son and recognized nothing in its features. It was wholly unique — a stranger’s face, smiling, holding a milkshake in one hand. A girl was sitting next to him with her chin in her netted fingers, dimly reflecting O.K.’s smile.
“Who is the girl?” asked Johnny.
Grady had a mouthful of water. He spit it back into the glass. After a length of silence, Johnny looked up from the picture to see what was taking so long. Grady was rubbing two wonders together between his thumb and middle finger. He nodded significantly at the chits. Johnny got the hint. Grady slipped the chits back into his pocket.
“Her house,” he said. “He eats next to her and sleeps in her window.”
“In her window?”
Grady took another drink of water. He made a face of disgust and spit this mouthful out, too.
“I am done,” he said. “Yes. Tell the word around. No more days of your independence. No more of your wives, daughters, husbands, and sons. I hate. You are the last I hate. I am tired of this hate. I need new hate, far from here.” He stood up, placing his glass on the table next to Johnny. Johnny didn’t move. “Look at you,” said Grady. “You are sitting. This is why I will leave America. Your son is in your hand and you sit down.”
Johnny picked up the water glass and set it on a coaster. Then he looked up. “You don’t understand. A decision can’t be rushed; time has to pass.”
“No. An idiot would say so. Decisions, such as decisions in a court, yes, are made long before time. Guilty, yes?”
“What are you saying?”
Grady smiled thinly, in that instant so like a grandfather, dying, prepared to leave behind a legacy of righteous fury if nothing else would stick.
“I say you should have no secrets from your son.”
Then Grady left, taking his echoes with him. Johnny moved to the couch. He thought, for quite some time, in two minds: one was a scale weighing the choices that were in front of him; the other sat in judgment on the first, growing ever more blood-fired and angry that he could even consider there to be a choice in the matter at all.
#
Wonder — the kid’s name was Delicate Jones — and her folks lived a bit north of Ashland, Oregon. According to Grady’s report, she and O.K. had jumped freight trains down from Bellingham. A conductor had spotted them in Portland, recognized them from their photos on the news, but hadn’t told the authorities; turned out he was a disgruntled citizen and had taken some pride at telling Grady of his naughty deed. The kids had thanked him. He said that the girl looked tired and was huddled into the guy. She may have been sick. The guy seemed all right. Both of them were bald.
Johnny spent the plane ride reading the report and, once the words began the give him a concentration headache, gazing at the pictures. There was one of O.K. and Delicate seen from a distance; they were sitting on the green hill of some park. It was taken on a sunny day, but they were pressed together, sealing all space between them like two hands clenched together, as though a blizzard were falling around them.
On the ground, Johnny checked into a hotel in Ashland. He ate a quick dinner in the hum of a Shakespeare-themed restaurant. He had Steak-upon-Onions. He left the waitress, who had had bad comedic timing, a joy, though he thought she’d probably burn it with her friends later that night. It was dark by the time he returned to his hotel and lay on the room’s thin bed.
The street ran close to his first-floor window. The sound of passing cars didn’t so much bother him as the vibrations that they transmitted from street to earth to wall to bed. He found himself unable to sleep. More than once he was close, but each time came a youth with a perversely loud bottom end, or a diesel hauler, and startled him so that he felt his eyes yanked back to him from dreamland as if they were attached to his sockets by rubber bands.
He turned on the TV to distract himself. He found a movie that, after a few lines, he recognized as being one that his co-workers frequently quoted to each other around the office. It was awful. There was a laugh track.
Johnny got out of bed. When he wasn’t lying down, he didn’t feel the vibrations so strongly. They passed through his feet, up his tibia and then, though he didn’t realize it, were obliterated by the quaking in his knees.
#
In the end, he just went ahead and did it. He waited around a frozen yogurt shop Grady had observed the kids frequenting and got a coffee. He was there when the shop opened at ten in the morning; he kept ordering coffees until O.K. and Delicate slouched in at two. Johnny tried not to look at O.K. as his son waited in a short line to order for the both of them. Delicate sat down at a table in the corner and leaned her head against the wall. She had eyes as round and dead as two pennies. Her hair was coming in, a light blonde fuzz. She was staring right at Johnny. After a few moments, he tried giving her a wink, but it wasn’t something he had practiced and it felt slow and weak.
O.K. slid into the seat across from her, back to his father. He talked quickly, barreling over the cracks in his pubescent voice. He had stories to tell — dreams to be remembered in the sugared cool air, to be exposed for the absurdities they were. He had a phrase that Johnny had never heard before: Cut the rope, man. He said it over and over. The whole shop heard them; Johnny caught the cashier grinning once. He went up to get another coffee.
“That kid come in a lot?” he asked.
“O.K.? Yeah. He’s new around here. Kid has the strangest dreams. My brother owns a bookshop on seventh; I keep trying to get O.K. to show up for the open mic nights. He’d be a treat.”
When Johnny sat down, he chose a table closer to the kids. Now he could hear Delicate, too, with her soft interjections. Her laugh came through her nose in soft chuffs like a dog sighing. O.K. had a laugh that filled the room with descending cadences. Sometimes he slapped the table, setting their spoons to vibrating.
“Let’s go to the park,” O.K. suggested when their dishes were empty. Delicate nodded. She moved as though through gauze, and her slow eyes seemed clouded by the same. O.K. took her hand and escorted her out the door. Johnny followed.
The kids walked, O.K.’s right hand entwined with Delicate’s left. With his free hand, O.K. gestured and pointed, as though conducting a symphony of his own words. The park was nearby, not much more than a small hill on a triangular lot bordered by traffic. The kids sidestepped a pair of frolicking dogs and a sunbather on her stomach with her top undone. Johnny leaned against a tree just off the sidewalk.
O.K.’s hand came unbound from Delicate’s and signaled a crescendo of his laughter. Delicate shook her head, mock dismayed at whatever joke O.K. had just told. Her eyes settled on Johnny. He tried to turn away, but his own traitor eyes kept flicking back to the top of the hill to see if it was safe, if she had let her gaze drift. She hadn’t.
So Johnny took a walk. Three blocks to the south, six blocks north, three blocks south again. He ended up at the same tree. The kids were still there, but lying on their backs, looking up at the few wispy clouds that were too faint and too high to be images of anything. Nevertheless, O.K. was pointing, tracing designs.
Johnny went halfway up the hill, past the sunbather, who looked up at him and smiled, and sat within earshot of the kids. They were silent. In that moment, Johnny was nearly content. The silence of the sun light and the silence of the children and the silence of the woman on her stomach were heavy like a drowsy lover’s body. Even the noise of traffic almost faded into background, but then the profane honking of a horn made his heart beat arrhythmic and he coughed to set the pumping right again.
A swish of fabric came from behind. He turned in time to catch Delicate, in her flowered summer skirt, approaching. He leaned back onto his elbows, feigning comfort. She sat down beside him, cross-legged.
“I know what you want,” she said. She didn’t look up. “You want him.” The conviction in her voice was like an order. Johnny took a breath to tell her what a crazy kid she was, but she turned her face away as though expecting his protest and refusing to accept it. She stared at O.K. She spoke haltingly, and she slurred as though her tongue were too slow for the thoughts that propelled it. She said, “Please. I love him,” and, “I need him.” She turned back to Johnny, who had lost all thoughts now of anything but silence, and squeezed her eyes shut, working the muscles to force saline onto her eyelashes, staining them dark brown. She said, “I wake up,” and, “In the morning and all I have to do is roll over,” and, “I can see him through my window, on the grass,” and “You don’t know me,” and, “I used to be an angel. Yeah, I used to be an angel,” and, “Now I’m not. I need to roll over and see him. I feel so lost in the morning. It’s like heaven pulls back in the night,” and, ‘This boring world— I need him. Please. I need him. You adults can change things. You can change people. I think I understand. Please don’t change him,” and, “Please please don’t look at him again.”
She smelled of hospital air, thick with uncertainty, sickness, and skin. For her sake, Johnny resisted an urge to glance over his shoulder.
“I just wanted to apologize. Will you tell him—”
“No, please, no I won’t,” said Delicate. Then she stood up and her dress played a hush over the grass and Johnny heard her say, Hey wake up sleepy head.
That was that, then. Johnny stood up. He dug in his trouser pocket for a pair of wonders. He tossed them lightly on the grass where they’d find them if they returned the way they came.
Again, he didn’t sleep that night. He paced, thinking of writing a letter to O.K., imagining the thousands of expressions that could cross his son’s face upon reading it, and about how only one would. He went for a walk and wound up at the late night mall. Shaved heads were in this year. He saw versions of O.K. in every shop, all hunch-shouldered and loud and leaning in towards a girl’s affections.
At the arcade he dumped his pocketfuls of terror on a little boy and his friend, saying, He doesn’t need this anymore. The kids’ faces lit up for a moment before they realized how worthless all that plastic was to them. Johnny watched them lug it to the counter and trade it into a couple tokens for the games; then he watched them spend the tokens on pops of color and gunfire.
In the morning, he took a cab to the airport and bought a ticket home. While he waited for his plane to board, he leaned against the observation windows, watching the jets coast back and forth across the tarmac. Their swept-back wings summoned the constant illusion of movement, of speed, of victory.
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