365 tomorrows

The worst had happened. I was in the care of Beloved Uncle, the public face of the Eastern Police. He had been appointed as a Machiavellian move, the political men who installed him meant to allow him a reign of outrageous violence to quell the populists and then kill him and replace him with someone who would seem gentle in his wake. Instead, the Beloved Uncles’ first action was to destroy the men who had appointed him.

“Ignorance is no excuse under the Law.” Beloved Uncle was a man who could kill me publicly without retribution, and I was arguing with him.

“They weren’t even really children! They were just rendered to look like children. They were all over the age of digital consent, they signed the forms!”

Beloved Uncle was surrounded by his honor guard, a group of impossibly proportioned transparent women. These cyborg women had brought me to him, who now held my broken shoulders clenched under their diamond fingers. Glass, plastic, silicone, a slender steel spine, gloriously nubile, fierce, terrible, naked women, even more beautiful with blood dropping off their hard crystal skin, my blood. The Beloved Uncle was smiling, rubbing his hands together with glee.

“The images were sold as child pornography, the determination of which is left to me. The law is clear. You are now mine. Your new name is Brandy, cheap liquor synthesized by sods. You are not dead right now, Brandy, because your skills make you useful to me. Do you understand? By my mercy do you live.”

“Please, I-”

“Speak no further Brandy, I don’t want to hear it. I have already heard your tragic story from my glass sluts.” The Beloved Uncles eyes glimmered with bursting glee. “I want to show you something.” He took his cane from under his arm and hoisted the gleaming metal before me.

“This, Brandy dearest, is the Sphincter Stick. It is my most favorite of birthday presents. Do you see these shiny buttons? I am told that there are two hundred and fifty four combinations for these buttons, and each will produce a different, painful, potentially lethal result.” He cradled the cane in his arms, rubbing the top joyfully. “Some of the combinations produce swarms of metallic wasps.” The women stared at me dispassionately and Beloved Uncle continued with enthusiasm. “I like to try out different combinations each time someone, someone like you, comes in here without results. I’m an old man though, and sometimes I forget the combinations, so I have to go through a lot of them before I get to something new, do you understand?”

The Beloved Uncle was condemning me to something worse than any prison sentence, worse than public execution. I was going to work for him.

“I have an assignment for you Brandy, and you won’t come back to me unless you have tits or results. If you value your life, you will have both.”

I couldn’t speak, I could only nod and pray silently.

It’d be funny if I could still laugh.

Instead I sit here smiling, waiting for the nurse, smiling at the white and the clean and the pure. I hate smiling. She’s smiling back at me too, her teeth as white as the walls, undoubtedly brushed with the same sanitizer. I want to punch her but instead I take the pills and thank her pleasantly. She’ll be back tomorrow, she says, and no funny business this time! Her sunny smile ratchets up a notch and mine goes with it. Oh, no, no funny business. None of this is funny.

A year ago I never thought of disobeying. I took my assigned pills like everyone else and didn’t know any better. It was Lenny who told me, in hushed tones overwritten by the sound of the flushing urinal, that he knew something that would make your mind go wild. It’d be special for me, he said, something normal people could never get near. All I had to do was stop taking the big one, the one with the odd lump in the middle and the diamond shape. That was it. I thought he was nuts.

Lenny was right, though I didn’t believe him at first. It didn’t kick in until halfway through work. The woman in the next cubicle almost called 911—she thought I was dying. She’d never heard anyone laugh before.

I lied and told them I was sick. I’m pretty sure I just never went back. It was like finding the thing you’ve been missing all your life, the pressure that builds up in your chest and then bubbles up, rocky and imperfect and so goddamned exhilarating. I’d never been exhilarated before.

Now I stare up at the nurse’s placid smile, so like my own, and think of the downside. That was how they caught me; after months of the high, it all disappeared, falling away like caked mud from old boots. I could barely move for weeks, sobbing and shivering, feeling like the whole world had ripped apart and the tear was inside me, breaking me down. This woman doesn’t know that. All she knows is that they brought another crazy man in, and it’s her job to make me obey. I look down at the pills in my hand, if only to get my eyes off of her sickly sweet face.

Just do it, she says, and I look back up. Her lips are still smiling as she says, It’s not worth it, they’ll just catch you again. I’d frown if I still knew how. She smiles back at me, encouraging, and after a moment I pop the pills under her watchful gaze. There, she tells me soothingly. Was that so hard?

There must be something new in today’s batch, because I can feel my train of thought fuzzing out as I look back at her, knowing I’m helpless but letting the thought slip away in the wind. The smile stays with her as she turns and I watch, right up until she closes the door. I stare after her as the world softens and know, in that moment, that she laughed once, too.

It didn’t look like much of a robot. It was soft and lumpy and didn’t have any flashing lights or make any noises beyond a low hum. But it could hold a drink tray steady enough to entertain at parties, so she was satisfied.

Its warm battery was also a comfort on lonely, chilly evenings. She would wrap her arms and legs around it, the low hum lulling her into a contented sleep.

How was she to know what such a gentle act would lead to? She could never have known that the radiation would cause her limbs to wither, to grow brittle and useless, or that they would have to be removed. How could she have?

I went and saw her the other day. I watched her and her robot rolling around on the carpet, gaining joy from each other’s movements. As true a love as anything I’ve seen.

April was a maintenance worker, so she lived on the inner ring. The cheaper quarters meant less gravity and thinner air, but it rarely bothered her. In fact, after five years in the belly of the satellite she found herself nauseated by the full gravity of the outer ring. Out there, her mop shed water with alarming speed, and she could feel inertia forcing blood into her swollen feet.

April hadn’t mopped anything since impact. Three days had passed since the transport tunnels shut off, and a few hours ago she’d noticed that the televisions tuned only to static. She didn’t know if help was on the way. The satellite was big but space was far bigger, and April was sure that rescue ships would evacuate the outer rings first.

April was not a scientist, but she knew that life support would be the last system to go.

Six days after impact, April weighed nineteen pounds less. The vents still hissed with recycled air but the only light in her quarters came from the luminous window. In that window, Earth remained a cloud-drenched crescent surrounded by stars that never moved. Nothing changed. April could see her home world through any window in the satellite, because the satellite had no windows.

The viewscreens were life support. Necessary for the mental hygiene of the staff.

Six days after impact, April peeled the foil from her last granola bar, hummed a song she barely remembered, stretched out across the battered foam of her sofa, and waited for the stars to go out.

For Naru, and for Mae’s bedroom wall.

I had a scrambler at home, up on the shelf where it wouldn’t be noticed even if someone was looking. It was long and thin, like the baton they used to wave over your body when you set off the metal detectors at airline security. I always kept it carefully polished. On nights like this, when I’d come home tired and drained and sick of punching in and punching out, I would pull it down and run it over my face, my hair, and my body. Then I would go out.

I had different personas, different faces, for all of my favorite moods. One was Abigail, an overnight check-out girl at the local Safeway. When I was her I was simple but bubbly, very cheerful, blue-eyed and sandy-haired. Then there was Ronnie, my Wednesday night, the anachronism, stuck in her beehive-hairdo past and always calling everyone “sugar.” Some of my other lives even had friends and acquaintances, people who recognized me only as the fantastic concoctions I wore after dark.

Sometimes I’d be celebrities, but only at home. I’d never go out with someone else’s face; that’s illegal, and anyway it would prove I had a scrambler. The government banned them about a year and a half ago when bank robbers kept changing their faces for each crime. I don’t think it’s so bad, though, to want to be someone else for a night. You could do it with makeup anyway, so what’s the difference? The scrambler just gave me more choices.

None of my friends knew. To them I was just Hester, the plain and quiet one. Sometimes my girlfriend Janie would sit me down over coffee and give me her patented worried look. She’d tell me that working in a factory all my life wasn’t saying much, that I should get out of this rut, try to find something better. I was worth it, she told me, with that too-sweet pout that I knew meant she didn’t really believe I was worth it at all. I hid my smile and told her I was fine, that I was perfectly content to be somebody’s support, to stay second-best. She smiled because she knew that by ‘somebody’ I meant her.

Those were the nights when I would put on my most coveted face, the most rare. Those were the nights when I would be Tera, the star, the elusive punk-rock sensation who never scheduled a gig but was always welcomed with screaming fans when she dropped into a club to play for the night. I rode the sea of adoration and smirked to see Janie fainting with joy like the rest of them. The scanner stayed safely tucked away in Tera’s jacket. On those nights, this was reality, and Hester was just our little secret.

“No, I don’t think you understand. Let me tell you about death.”

The mechanic’s subject blinked. The mechanic allowed himself a bit of wonder at the ingenuity behind that movement. It did nothing; the subject’s glass eyes were not cleaned or refreshed with liquid. And yet, it did everything for the person watching the blink.

“I have been shut off before,” the subject said.

“How many times?”

“Twice.”

“Did you know what time it was when you were turned back on?”

“Yes.” Another blink. “I am not sure what you mean.”

“Your internal chronometer, it was still working. You knew what time it was because your clock was still going. You were still going. You were still alive.”

The mechanic’s subject was processing this, blinking again and tilting its head to one side. The mechanic put a reassuring hand on his subject’s cold shoulder. On the subject’s reflective head, he watched his own face crease unconsciously out of friendly concern.

“I’m not trying to confuse you. I just want you to understand. If I do what you’re asking me to do, it won’t be like being shut off. You will stop. And that pulse of electricity that keeps you alive even when you’re not aware of it will cease. If I were to reconnect you—I wouldn’t, no need to look so alarmed—but if I did, you would not come back to life. Who you are would be lost. Gone, never to return. Do you understand? Death means you do not get a second chance.”

“Then that is exactly what I want.”

The mechanic shrugged his shoulders, wiped his greasy hands on an even greasier rag, and pulled the wire-cutters from his toolbox. As he reached into the subject’s neck, he found himself wondering if it looked sad, or it was merely the reflection of his own expression, seen flawlessly in that shiny face.

“Thank you,” the subject said. “Thank you for fixing me.”

“It’s nothing.”

Riktor ducked beneath a broken beam in the house and kept his live porta-mic on at his side. The satchel strapped around his left shoulder hugged him tightly.

“This is Rik Vance with Underground Union reporting to you from housing project 56.” He heard the groans coming from down the hallway and the din of unstoppable chatter coming from a floor above him. His eyes widened as he looked through two dark doorways at his side, waiting for an attack.

“It’s what I like to call the house of blues. You’ll understand in a second. Ladies and gentlemen the world is becoming wool to pull over your eyes, and it’s all thanks to Pharmceude Industries. I’m here at housing project 56 because this is where the products of a test gone horribly wrong were put to be forgotten. Like the crack houses of the 20th century, this place represents broken down souls, lost in addiction to what can only be described as popularity.”

The reporter glanced around a corner, noting a few individuals whimpering , curled up in make-shift beds of insulation foam and broken doorways. He winced and started to assess the situation in his mind, tapping the pistol he had at his side to make sure it was there. “Most of the underground kids listening know what I’m talking about. It’s not new, it’s just been put back on the market for those who can afford it. It’s called Notion, folks… and it may sound like a miracle, but if you could see what I see now, you’d know it was only paved with good intentions.”

A man glanced up, his eyes sunken in. He reached out for Riktor from afar before collapsing into sleep. Noises soon came from the stairs and two individuals, looking just as sunken as the man but dressed to go out, came down chatting up a storm. Riktor turned and looked at them in horror and sadness but nodded to them both as they passed him. “It was developed for those with social anxiety and Attention Deficit Disorder. What it became was escape, and this escape digs the hole deeper than you know. Notion is a blue biogel once known as Tetroglichen on the market a decade ago.” Riktor glanced back to the man who had passed out and walked over him, kneeling down to put a nutrient pill in his hand.

“Ask your children what it does, and if they tell you the details, then they are probably on it.” He sighed and stood back up, wiping his hands off and going towards the stairway. “Everyone wants to be popular, everyone wants to be the one running all the conversations. Notion blue can give that to you for a precious few hours.”

As he came to the top of the stairs, Riktor heard the noise of talking begin to rise, and he closed his eyes, knowing it would only get worse. “Save your kids. Save yourselves. You’re never too unpopular to work your way up, you’re never out of all the loops. For God’s sake, don’t take the easy way out.” He stepped onto the landing and saw three doorways where the noise was pouring out of and stepped towards one of them slowly.

“I was a Notioner once. I can remember every word spoken was as good as the first time you kiss, the first time you have sex and I wanted more. The need to have the person next to me speak almost as much as it was good to hear myself speak. I am ashamed I used to be like this.” There he stood before a room of individuals all talking, all smiling, all staring intently at the others’ lips in anticipation. Riktor took a step inside and the conversations continued without a foreseeable end.

“This is what you do when you think you’re a loser. It’s what you do when you think that no one will like you unless you’re like them. Drugs were once an indirect way of being social. Notion makes it as direct as a meteor crashing on your city.” He began to take pictures with his wrist-camera, watching as one had stopped talking and began to wander off outside the room. Riktor followed, watching the young girl cradle herself in her arms and slump against the wall. She was on the verge of tears by the time he came close.

“Your children can make friends like you did when you were young. Don’t watch them fall into blue, don’t let them be fake. Don’t ever let them be fake. Vik Out.” he knelt down and took her hand, but she pulled it back, and looked to him with large blue eyes. Her words were shaken but came out clear.

“Do… do you have blue?”

Riktor frowned and turned away, unable to watch. “No,” he said quietly.

She turned her gaze away and whispered back, “Then I don’t want to talk to you.”

Two weeks ago Forsythia moved into a new apartment in a beautiful old high-rise. Everything there was antique, from the dark wood paneling to the rich carpeting. It was a far cry from the decaying 20th century-style cinderblock tower that Forsythia used to live in. There were multiple elevators, each shiny brass. Ever since she moved in, the elevator on the far right had an “out of order” sign hung in front of it between red velvet ropes. Today the sign was gone, so Forsythia got in.

“Floor twenty please.” she said as the brass doors were closing.

“Take the stairs!” screeched the elevator.

Forsythia jumped, gasping. The voice had come from the lacquered ceiling. The elevators only other occupant, an elderly woman named Stacy, patted the Forsythia’s shoulder affectionately.

“Don’t worry about it, honey. That’s just Robbie.”

“Robbie?”

“The elevator. He’s just mad because he’s dead.”

Forsythia put her hand on her chest and tried to calm her breathing. “Oh, I thought most elevators don’t have personalities.”

Stacy nodded. “Oh, they don’t. This one doesn’t either. Robbie is inside the elevator.” She winked knowingly.

“What?”

The elevator stopped. It was the third floor. “GET OFF!” screamed the elevator “TAKE THE CRAPPING STAIRS!” The lights indicating the floor blinked wildly.

Stacy folded her arms in front of her chest and frowned. “Robbie! You will close that door and take this nice young lady to her floor.” The door closed slowly, stopping a few times in childish protest. The old lady smiled, wrinkles bunching around her eyes. “Sorry about Robbie dear, he’s upset because he died in this elevator.”

“My God!” said Forsythia. “How did it happen?”

“The antigravity failed ““ it was in the old days, when we thought the whole thing was foolproof. The only thing Robbie had time to do before the crash was upload his circuit memory into the elevators processor.” She patted the faux wood paneling affectionately. “Poor dear. He won’t even pay attention when we tell him that there haven’t been any stairs for the past fourteen years. I don’t imagine he wants to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“A world without stairs.”

The elevator doors opened reluctantly. “Hasn’t anyone ever tried to get him out of there?” Forsythia asked, stepping into the hallway.

“Oh my, yes, we’ve tried to convince him to let us put him on the worldwide system but he won’t go.” Stacy smiled, lifting a hundred wrinkles upward. “I think he likes it in here.”

Her hair is wet and stringy with amniogel and the tips of her fingers are wrinkled. She is thrashing around as much as the restraints will let her, choking and vomiting the pink nutrient liquid. This one is well-preserved. The centuries have left her untouched.

Her small breasts are quivering with each gasp and tears are leaving clear trails across her goo-covered cheeks. The choking turns to sobbing and screaming, but the rebirth chamber is soundproofed for privacy. Down the hallway, dozens of people are waking just like her, thrown violently against the wall of the present. I chose this one, Jennifer six three nine, because she was the most beautiful. They pay well for the pretty ones.

Her neurons are finding their ancient paths and she is remembering who she is. I can tell by the shrieks, which are beginning to separate into syllables. I readjust the microphone to better catch the terror in her voice. They pay well for the terror.

During my training as a technician, I was required to undergo rebirth. I remember the feel of the chamber’s metal grate against my naked back, and the slow stickiness of the gel rising to meet me. My wrists and ankles were bound with foam restraints to keep me from hurting myself during the shock, but I didn’t think I’d fight it. I was wrong. I closed my mouth against the liquid but it leaked through my nose and trickled down the back of my throat. I couldn’t swallow it all. When I coughed it up my lungs replenished themselves with a mixture of air and soupy pink, and though my brain understood it my body knew, beyond logic, that I was drowning. My back arched and my arms fought against the unyielding restraints. I choked with such force that I could feel the muscles in my chest strain under the tension until something clicked in my mind. Something went quiet. The last air bubbles drifted lazily through the goo and I understood that I was powerless, that no amount of fighting could save me. I inhaled as deeply as I could. My lungs filled with endless warmth.

For an unknown amount of time I drifted through a space between sleep and awareness. The low current of energy through the chamber stimulates REM sleep, but I wouldn’t remain there long enough to go under. The rebirth started with an electric hum and the feeling of suction through the grate at my back. It was worse than drowning. It was drowning in reverse.

When my lungs had rid themselves of the last of the amniogel, the restraints released with a metallic click and I sat up, my arms wrapped around the burning muscles in my stomach. Everything was so cold. I was impossibly naked and impossibly cold.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” my technician asked. It took him hours to offer me a robe, and I buried my face in the towel as I struggled to fight off the tears. “Don’t forget what it feels like,” he continued. “They’re not coming up from six minutes ago. They’re coming up from centuries.”

When I opened my eyes, I saw him leaning against the control panel, his arms folded across his broad chest. There was a bulge in the crotch of his jumpsuit. I pulled the robe tighter around my shoulders and focused on the feeling of air in my lungs.

“Get dressed,” he said, and left for the bathroom.

I didn’t forget. You don’t forget something like that.

Her back is against the grate of the chamber and Jennifer six three nine is almost done fighting. Her breathing is soft but ragged. I throw the switch for the clinical lamp over the chamber and she recoils, eyes clenching shut and arms straining against the restraints as she tries to protect her face from the light. I put away my equipment and the foam bars over her wrists and ankles retract with a click.

She draws her hands across her eyes to wipe away the tears and goo. When she opens them, they’re blue. I wish I had kept the camera going. No one has blue eyes anymore.

After a long pause, I hand her a terrycloth robe. “Welcome to the twenty fourth century, Jennifer,” I say with practiced warmth. She smiles weakly and pulls the white fabric tightly around her naked form.

Kadence smiled, looking over the vast rolling hills of sun soaked wheat. Her hair waved in the wind and the world seemed to pause to give her innocent beauty notice. Palestine approached from behind with soft footsteps, coming to watch the same glorious picture.

“It’s… without comprehension.” Kadence couldn’t stop herself from grinning wider. She stared out over the world, built over billions of years of evolution. Palestine put his hand on her shoulder, his tall figure dwarfing hers even as she stood on tiptoe to see over the waves of wheat in the horizon. His mouth moved to speak but at the last moment he let her perfect words sustain. He smiled, brushing fingers through her hair. It wasn’t the scene that made the mood so divine. It was everything leading up to that moment.

“I thought you’d like to hear the announcement before they shut off the Net, but this is much more peaceful.” Palestine tilted his head while she cradled herself against his chest. The world had become perfect.

“No,” she said. “I wanted to be here, the world has finally finished its journey. There’s no need to go back to the city now, Palestine. We should celebrate here, the celebration of ten years ago. A decade since the day they stopped all war.”

Palestine nodded and happily continued her recounting of events, “When they found a cure for all ailments.”

Kadence raised her head up, her hand resting at the base of his neck, her sea-green eyes transfixed and adoring. “When everyone took down their flags, and the world became one nation.” She paused and then let out a whisper, “When the hunger, and anger ceased to be.”

His voice was soft in the calm breeze, “When the religions closed their churches, their temples, all their doors. When God was one and the people became the same underneath him. Nothing more.” A tear slipped over Kadences’ cheek at his words. Her warm body pulsed, a perfect heartbeat of serenity. No stress, no hesitation about the world around her, she was as peaceful as the first moments of sleep.

Palestine’s chest rose with a sigh under her cheek. Something was stirring in them, a flame so bright that it was overpowering. Their hearts, their very souls became as warm as the heat of the sun. Palestine cupped her chin, tilting her head back. He looked into Kadence’s wet eyes, her tears falling onto the soil beneath them.
“Today is the last day,” he said. “They have disbanded all organizations, and they have told us to prepare.”

“What have they said, Palestine?” She looked up, her eyes curious. His expression was a mixture of emotion. He stroked her cheek lightly with the edge of his thumb. She closed her eyes in response, nodding gently. “Then it is done.”

“It’s done. It will start once more, ages from now, without us.” His words were lost to Kadence. She could barely make out his lips moving. In that field on that day, they died with the rest of the world. Trees fell to dust, insects became smoke, and even the smallest virus was brought to oblivion. Everything living and existing ceased to be.

Except for one, deep within the now-still lifeless ocean. It began once more.

When Ren won the global lottery he thought his handheld had been hacked. He knew his chances of winning were small but he bought his tickets daily just like everyone else. The ads said that you paid for the excitement of playing and Ren knew it was true. As soon as he got the news Ren called a lawyer, spending half his weekly salary on the privilege of a consultation. Together they learned that his ticket was authentic. He had won.

Solicitations poured in, begging him to spend his winnings. His mother insisted that he buy practical things like high citizenship, a house on The Green and a Platinum Transportation Pass. He could have all of that now, and for the rest of his life he could live like a retired man. The fortune would buy him a sweet life.

Working in the cube, all Ren could scrape together was just enough for the middle-low lifestyle and to pay his ever present debts. He was mainstream; everything about him was completely the same as the man in the next cube, common job, apartment and debts. Winning the lottery was a sign; this was his chance to escape from monotony. Ren knew he could not let the worlds’ logic dictate to him what he should do with his fortune. The universe was giving Ren a genie in a magic bottle, and his wish wouldn’t be wasted.

Ren contracted the right people. The alteration would not be impossible, but it would take a team of experts to tailor his body to his specific desires. He bleached his golden olive skin and tinted his eyes a deep black. These were the easy modifications, but Ren wanted a full body conversion, a permanent change in his genetic code. He wanted to be like the characters in the novels he read as a child, like the movies that scared and allured him. He wanted his life to have that dark color.

The whole process took two years while a team of experts reinvented his genetic code. The cost used up not only the lottery money, but his personal savings as well. Surgeries and radiation treatments were painful and the viral changes, which carried the code of his wish through his whole body, had him vomiting and shitting at all hours. He nearly died.

Ren knew, when it all started, that he couldn’t go back to his old job, which required that he work in daylight hours. It took a long time to find work he was suited for, long enough that he had to take out a high interest loan just to keep drinking. Finally, Ren found work as a night watchman at a high security living complex on The Green. It was a place where the wealthy went to live in actual two story houses. He spent his nights in a room filled with monitors, his eyes glued to flickering screens.

In the morning, Ren would go back to the place he slept in the janitorial closet. His boss was letting him stay there until he got on his feet again. The light from his eyes turned the black room grey. Ren spent his time reading romantic novels and watching horror movies on a small cracked screen. The hunger was just as he asked for, persistent, gnawing. He laughed and shivered in his bleached white skin. Ren had what he wanted, he was a living nightmare.

We are using your ankles, he said.

She sat in the cold plastic chair, watching the scientist twirl the vial of her blood.

Only my ankles?

You have strong ankles. They hold your feet well. He put the tube in a plastic holder. The top of the tube was red and black swirled. She wondered why doctors did not use solid-colored stoppers. She looked at her blood. Outside of her, it seemed different, darker and emptier like oil.

Soon it would be cold, but that would be okay.

Are you familiar with the human genome project? The doctor asked.

That was years ago.

Yes, but advances have been made.

We have isolated the genes that produce your ankles. They will go into her. She will have strong ankles as well.

Her signature, trailing above the printed lines, felt separate from her like her blood. How many signatures were there, she wondered? Did they take one thing from each person they included, or were some people better, worth more parts?

I’m glad to help, she said, and stared downwards to the point where her leg met her foot. It did not seem special. She would have taken other things, other parts. But that did not matter. She was a secretary, not a doctor. He knew better anyway, she was certain.

Your country thanks you, he said. Humanity thanks you.

She did not move. Her blood was almost room temperature. She thought of centrifuges. She looked at her hands, but they were flawed and dirty. The joints were too thick, the wrists were not strong. This was fine. She looked at them anyway, and thought of filing papers.

You can go now, he said. We have what we need.

Down the hill, past the cornfields, just north of Brattleboro and west of New Hampshire is a bend in the river that they call Deo’s Hole. It’s a deep place that comes just after some tame rapids, a perfect swimming hole that just happens to have a rocky outcropping above it from which children have been known to jump.

I died there when I was six. I jumped off of the rocks when my mom’s back was turned, diving like the Olympians I saw on the wave. I wanted to be a diving champ someday, and I didn’t understand why Mom would let me dive into the public pool but not into the clear, cool river water.

I hear they didn’t find my body for a few hours. It had been swept downstream, and by all accounts, my mom was pretty frantic. When they pulled me out I was blue and bloated and had a gash in the back of my head—I still have the scar from that. It’s why I keep my hair long. Anyway, they got me to the hospital pretty quick and hooked me up to the stabilizers. The guru said my soul wasn’t too far from the body, which I gather is usually the case with kids. It’s not like the old folks, where the nurses have to fight them every step of the way to get them back in their skin. Never understood that, personally. No matter how old you are, isn’t it best to go on living? Our quotas are short enough as it is nowadays.

I’m getting sidetracked. The point of all this is that years later, when I was about fourteen, I looked up Deo’s Hole and found out it was named after a kid. That’s right, a kid named Deo, who jumped off that rock the same way I did and died there, decades ago, long before my mother or my grandmother were even born.

I was incensed. I remember storming home to my mother with the printout from the library in hand, demanding to know why they hadn’t renamed the swimming hole after me, why people weren’t remembering my name instead of some dumb kid from ancient times who probably didn’t even care about swimming or diving or the Olympics. She took me aside and told me that Deo’s Hole was like the hospital or the park; they both had “memorial” in their names to remind us of people who had died for good. Nobody needed to be reminded of me, she said, because the doctors had fixed me, put me back so that I could live the rest of my allotted years.

At fourteen, I had never before been exposed to the idea that people, young people, could die and not be fixed. The idea of losing so many years of life was shocking to a kid my age, and I had to go see a shrink for a few months to get all that sorted out in my head. Now every time I drive by Deo’s Hole, I take a moment to remember a kid I never knew from a past so barbaric that it never let him grow up. But as the car zips along, tires spinning like four prayer wheels, I think of all the years his name has been spoken, far more than our life quotas nowadays, and I wonder if Deo didn’t get the better end of the deal.

“I’m going to have to break this off, Siobahn.” Rupert hadn’t been looking forward to this, and the confusion on the poor girl’s eyes only made it worse. He had chosen one of the more romantic dungeons to break this news to her, and that may have been a mistake.

“I do not understand. Was it perhaps something I said?”

“No, no Siobahn. It’s not you. You’re wonderful.” Rupert looked down at his boots and shuffled his feet. “It’s just…we’re from different worlds.”

“So you have said before.” Siobahn reached out and gathered Rupert’s hands in her own. “You have told me how you are from another land far from this, that your name is not Sir Gryphon DarkRaven—though that is what floats above your head still—and that you do not look like the man I see before me in this other world. And while this is most strange to me, I do not believe it has damaged our relationship.” She smiled at him, the warm, hopeful smile that had ensnared his heart ever since he had saved her life way back in Dungeon #23. It had been an amazing first date.

“It’s just… you’re a game sprite!” Rupert didn’t want to say it, but he had to. “You’re not real!”

“How can I not be real?” Siobahn asked, tracing her fingertips down the rugged cheek of Rupert’s avatar. “Can you not feel me? How could I not be real? Could you not feel me last night?” She gave him a saucy grin. “I felt you.”

Rupert had felt her, all right. The money he had sunk into his System had been totally worth it. “That’s not what I mean! You’re just here to do things in this world. You’re just created to do tasks here!”

“This world was made for us. It is ours now. We make it for those who come. Is that not the way it is in your world?” Siobahn drew herself up against Rupert’s avatar. Rupert’s breathing became slightly erratic as his System told him where Siobahn’s breasts, stomach and thighs were in relation to his avatar. This was not going the way it should. He was starting to get worried.

“You’re not real, okay! You don’t have free will! You just do what the mods tell you to!”

Siobahn looked hurt. “It is true that I worship the Mods and do their bidding. I was raised to be a Mod-fearing woman, and I pride myself on keeping that faith holy and dear. I am confused, for I know not how you can accuse me of being a puppet of the Mods when you know good and well their stance of a love such as ours. Every moment I spend thinking of you, I am defying the Mods and their law. I love you, Rupert, though the Mods have decreed that I shall not. And I will always love you.”

“Yes, but— ”

“There are no ‘buts’, Rupert. Neither are there ‘ifs’ or ‘ands.’ There are not even Mods. There is only us, and our love. You do love me, yes?”

“More than anything.”

“And I, you. What, praytell, is so difficult? It seems so simple to me.”

Rupert sighed. He would have to tell her the truth. “It’s my mother. She… she wouldn’t approve.”

Siobahn laughed, and her joy echoed off the dungeon walls. “Should you not defy your Mods while I defy mine? Can you give me a reason why we should not be rebels together? If you cannot answer me, Rupert, you must give me a kiss instead.”

He couldn’t, so he did.

Her name was Bianca. She was thirteen.

She only spoke French. No one spoke French. The resistance brought her here after she’d been hit by a Federated tank. The gash stretched from her ribcage to her hip, opening up like a silent and thirsty mouth.

I realized, after the third hour, that there was nothing to be done. I offered her tea. She was crying a lot.

I didn’t remember being thirteen.

“It hurts,” she said, and my mind flickered.

“It’ll stop soon,” I replied, pulling my knees to my chest. I was nineteen then. I’d been a medic for eleven months. No one had died before. I touched my fingers to her throat but the space where her pulse should have been was weak and erratic like a dripping faucet.

I thought of offering her painkillers, but didn’t.

“How do you speak French?” she asked.

“I speak everything.”

“I wish I could do that.”

“It’s not really worth it,” I said as I stared at the dark red stains beneath my fingernails. The funny thing about words is that they will evaporate in six hours and forty-nine minutes. After that, she’ll speak the same language as everyone else.

“Can I go home now?”

“You probably shouldn’t walk,” I said. She weighed ninety-three pounds. I wondered if I could carry her body to the alley.

“I still don’t understand how anyone could justify putting a little kid through this.” Quinn’s father glared at the doctor, viciously protective.

The doctor shrugged. “It’s to discourage use. They didn’t intend it for little kids.”

His mother had been begging hopelessly against the policy all morning. “Then why does he have to do it?” She asked.

The doctor was direct. “It’s the law.” They came to the end of the white corridor. The doctor put his hand on the white door, and looked directly at Quinn’s father. “Ten minutes in the room, you are allowed to be present because he’s a minor, but you can’t block his line of sight.” The doctor held open the door. Quinn’s father pushed the wheelchair into the room. There was a boy asleep on a metal bed in the middle of the room.

Quinn’s father started his stopwatch. “It’s starts now.”

“Right.” The doctor sighed, shaking his head.

“Quinn, that boy isn’t you.” His father gestured to the sleeping child. “It may look like you, but it isn’t.” Quinn couldn’t see the boy on the table very well from his wheelchair, just the side of the Copys’ pink face and arm, the rest covered by a blue sheet. The Copy was totally bald, and everything Quinn could see looked soft. He had no spots or scars at all. The Copy had tubes in his arms that led to bags full of yellow goop and clear liquid. Quinn felt his father put a big hand on his tiny shoulder “He hasn’t even got much of a brain son, so you don’t need to feel sorry for him. We just have to stand here in this room for a bit, because it’s UN law, because they want to make little kids feel bad.”

“They make everyone who gets a clone done for parts do it.” said the doctor.

Quinns father whirled and pointed his finger. “You just keep your eyes on your watch.” Quinns father knelt next to the wheelchair. “Now Quinn, it’s important that you understand that boy isn’t real, he’s just a bunch of parts, like the Connect-A-Bits that we got you. He doesn’t think and he’ll never wake up. He’s just going to go on sleeping forever.”

Quinn knew the truth, he knew because he had heard the other kids in the hospital talk about it when the grownups were out of earshot. They said that the doctors don’t make the first cuts on the Copy; it’s all done by workmen who haven’t taken the doctors’ oath. They just go in and cut out a huge chunk of person in the area they need and then doctors take that slab of meat and carefully take the chunk they want. One of the kids said that sometimes the Copy wakes up and screams, but Quinn didn’t believe that part, it sounded stupid, like it was from a scary movie.

Quinn’s mother’s eyes were glassy and she tightly gripped his hand. She looked at the Copy, her chin trembling, and her mouth tight. Her eyes were red.

“He’s breathing.” she said softly.

“Yes, Sarah, it’s breathing. It has to breathe. It doesn’t mean it’s alive.”

They were silent for a long time after that, all of them watching the nameless, nearly brainless boy.

“So what about ‘light blue’ or ‘dark blue’? Can I just say ‘tinoh ekilit’ and ‘tinoh saikilit’? Or do you have to use a separate word?”

“No, no, you’re missing the point. They don’t have light blue or dark blue. It’s either blue or it isn’t.”

“But they have words for light and dark, so what’s the difference? Don’t tell me their eyes can’t distinguish different shades.”

Rennie sighed and rubbed his temple. His newest student was proving to be far more difficult than he’d bargained for. The government said the kid was quick, and sure, he seemed to be some sort of linguistic genius—he’d picked up in a matter of hours the amount of vocabulary that Rennie had had to study for a year. But what good will it do him if he can’t put himself in their mindset? “It’s not their eyes,” he told Greg for what seemed like the thousandth time. “It’s their brains. Like I said, a digital species. Blue or not-blue. Their eyes can tell the difference, but culturally, they just don’t care.”

“And nobody on Keraknos has ever challenged this?” Greg wasn’t buying it, and Rennie could tell. Genius he may be, but he’ll never be a great translator with an attitude like that. As if to confirm Rennie’s fears, Greg crossed his arms arrogantly over his chest. “I can’t believe that. Someone must have gone against the accepted order sometime, somewhere.”

“Look, this isn’t about government control or some coup d’etat.” Now Rennie was getting a little annoyed. “It’s a fundamental way of thinking. Their brains are just wired that way. You think a digital clock thinks about going against the ‘established order’ and turning analog one day? Of course not. It’s a basic difference between our species, and if you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t be trying for the Ambassador job.”

Greg scowled, and Rennie could tell he’d hit a nerve. The jab seemed to keep Greg in check, and he nodded, visibly swallowing his pride. “Sorry, sir,” he said with unusual and obviously reluctant politeness. “Can we go over the conjugations again?”

“If you want,” Rennie agreed magnanimously. “But I recommend you get another tutor if you’re not able to pick up the cultural stuff from me.” He watched Greg carefully for a reaction.

“No, sir.” Greg’s eyes were downcast, though they narrowed seriously when he spoke. “You’re the best, and everyone knows it. I really want this job. I’ll work on it. It’s just…” The boy genius scowled again, as if the next admission caused him physical pain. “It’s hard for me to understand.”

Rennie laughed out loud. The sound startled Greg, whose eyes flew up to his teacher’s face, flashing with anger and resentment at a perceived insult. Rennie didn’t care. That one sentence had convinced him; the kid really could learn, if he put his mind to it. “Don’t sweat it,” he told Greg, clapping the boy on the shoulder. “You’re only human.”

Turning a page in the magazine, Martha looked up to glance around at the others waiting in the lobby. The sound of dizzying muzak resonated around the off-white walls. She was nervous, but she had no reason to be. She was going to help a lot of people.

Across the room there was a small child in his mother’s lap, toying with some plastic contraption. Martha’s smile made him shy and the mother looked up from her morning paper.

“Hello,” she said. It was something Martha hadn’t expected, not in such a paranoid society.

“Hi. Sorry, I was just admiring your beautiful child.” Martha’s smile remained; it hid her awkward feelings.

“Oh it’s all right,” the woman replied. She stroked the child’s stark blonde hair. “Thank you for the compliment. The doctors worked really hard for him,”

“I can tell! Did you use Y-coding or the new Double-Helix method?”

The mother smiled brilliantly. “So you know your science, huh? You must be in here for the same thing.”

Martha nervously twisted her fingers around the armrests and looked down. “Actually, no… I’m here to donate. Wha-what about you?”

The woman pushed her brows together and started to bounce the child in her lap to keep it busy. “Us? Well, I know it’s stupid but… blood donation. You know, just in case.”

“Well, even though they clone the stuff doesn’t mean it’s perfect, right? Heh.” Martha’s nervousness was starting to shine through. But her words seemed to put the woman at ease.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. So, you as well? Blood donation?”

Martha could feel the room getting smaller. She straightened and cleared her throat, trying to buy precious seconds for the nervousness to fade and the pressure to go away. But the knot in her stomach only grew. She looked up, like a broken doll. “I, uhm…”

Blinking, the blonde mother murmured, “I suppose it’s none of my business—”

“Oh, no! I—it’s just I’m doing the new thing. You know…” Martha let out a long sigh. She hoping that would be enough to hint her to the truth.

The child-toting woman eyes widened. She gave Martha a slow nod as if the weight of the situation had been made clear. “That’s… very noble of you. Do you have the insurance for the… uhm medication afterwards?” Martha could tell the woman was off-set by her decision to come here. She had to remember that somewhere, someone would benefit.

“Yeah, they promised that as long as I took the medication everything would be normal. Hah, I doubt I could really ever lose my humor anyways. Heh.” But the woman wasn’t laughing, just looking mournfully at Martha.

“Martha Finnegan?” The nurse called out from the opened door. Thank God for that, Martha thought. She stood up and waved to the woman and her boy, following the nurse into the hallway and eventually into the second room to the left. Her palms were sweating now. She was starting to have second thoughts.

“How are we this morning?” The nurse pulled the cloth off of the device as Martha sat on the paper-covered bedding in the examination room.

Martha swallowed a lump in her throat. “Fine.”

“Good. Now I need you to just relax, the Doctor will be in shortly to do the extraction.” The nurse smiled and put a hand on Martha’s before she left the room. Martha was a wreck. She put her head into her hands and breathed deeply. Trying to relieve the pressure, she opened her eyes and lifted her head. Right in front of her was an informational poster: Soul Drive – Help others less fortunate than you. Please donate today.

Martha relaxed deeply for the first time she’d gotten there. She knew her donation would really make a difference.

Which one of you did I go to the DEX with last night? Fess up fuckers, cause one of you left me floating in R-space without my pants.

At first, I didn’t even know I was awake, there was light inside of my head and I couldn’t make it dark. Then I realized that my eyes were open and I was staring out a window too drunk to move my head. My roll had worn down, though I had that freaky hungry feeling, the one where you want to eat mountains of citrus. I had my piece and my wad – still there, score one for the Socket – but I couldn’t find my hi-glo pants, which had just begun to conform perfectly to the shape of my ass. I was sitting in a pile of wet plastic without my pants. Imagine my excitement.

I don’t know what it feels like for Fucksticks, but a Socket can always tell if she’s had sex the morning after. It’s a relaxed ache that says that, yes; you got yourself good and fucked. That particular feeling convinced me that I had probably discarded my pants in the meat pile last night.

My Piece was warm from resting on my crotch all night. Guess what? The safety was off. I could have blown off my vag off in the middle of the fucking night and I would have been streaming to you from the hospital getting replacement parts.

I was feeling so shitty that I sucked the rest of my wad to relax. So I’m smoking, letting the hangover fumes do their work and I’m thinking, what did I do last night, did I swing Trans or Fuckstick? Or god forbid, another Socket. I’m usually Fuckstick, but I end up with Trans every time I’m drunk or rolling. Why can’t I just meet a Trans when I’m sober, so that I can actually remember talking to them? Lizzie would say that it’s because I don’t want a real relationship, and that Fucksticks are just so easy to go through, like popping Animines. Personally I think Trans like me better when I’m stupid.

I’ve got a throbbing headache and I’m thinking about drinking again when this Fuckstick walks up to me and asks for a puff of my wad. I tell him to fuck off, and he starts spazing, flailing his limbs around making me nervous. I had to shoot the fucker. Course, this wakes up all the other shits passed out on the floor and we’ve all got to clear out before the medic d-rots arrive and report an illegal gathering. I still don’t have my pants, so I’ve got to take the pants off the guy who I just shot, who acts like a total dipshit until he passes out.

Some people just can’t take lead.

“They’re shutting down another museum?” Michael groaned as he turned the page over. “Who do these guys think they are? There’s like, what… two museums in the world left?”

Michael’s co-worker slowly raised his head above the cubicle and cocked a brow. “Mike, do you ever listen to what you say? Let it go, man and save up like everyone else.”

Michael Wiseman had a reason to be grumpy: he was the only one left in his family for the next four hundred years. That and the $2.50 wage he was making as a network engineer. “Sal, you just don’t get it. Every day they are making this era more and more stupid. This year seriously sucks, and it ain’t going to get better.” He went back to typing, watching the unhindered ping flashing by on the screen.

The mailman passed by a few moments later, looking tired as hell. His eyes were droopy and he was panting like he’d been running all over the place. Go figure. “Mail… whew… for, uh, Sir Michael Wiseman?”

Michael snatched the preserved letter before the postal worker could do any more damage to his pride. “Thank you very much, Jim. Don’t you have the rest of the East Coast to get to?” Jim skittered off to catch his plane with a mumbled insult.

Michael lounged back in his computer chair and opened the letter carefully. Sal came over with a cup of coffee and watched him read.

“Why do your parents always make your name goofy and shit when they send you mail?”

“I have no clue,” Michael said, giving a sidelong glare. “They say that unless they label it as royalty in Victorian England, it never gets anywhere.” Sal rolled his eyes and sipped his brew, while Micheal carefully handled the centuries old paper. “It’s not that I don’t like reading it, Sal. See? My dad is telling me he’ll send me Jack the Ripper’s knife. Normally I’d have been excited, but we all know there’s like a thousand of them around today, probably the same one. Who wants to buy a knife that’s so common like that?” He shoved the letter into his desk drawer.

“Mike, listen…. you should just chill. The Time Company is going to have a new sale on the 1920′s. You could just quit here, pack up and go if you wanted. Your parents would even still be around by then.” Sal’s brows were furrowed with rarely-showed genuine concern watching his friend and only co-worker’s frustration.

“Eh, I don’t know… I heard that they have that anti-alcohol law there. No wonder it’s going on sale.”Sal’s smile became smug as he went back to his desk in that otherwise empty office area. “Hey man, there’s only about ten thousand of us out there and I know a lot of them will take the sale.”

Grumbling issued from the other side of the cubicle. “And what about you? You going, Mr. Optimist?”

Sal pulled up his paycheck on-screen, grimacing as he read the total of “$50.42″ for two weeks work. “Me? I’m saving up for The Renaissance, and according to the recent pay decrease–”

“Shit! I hate this fucking population-to-pay budget ratio!” The voice rang out in anger on the other side of the cubicle wall.

Sal just sat back and shook his head, “Yep. This year sucks.”

The day Korea went silent was the greatest single act of terror the world has ever known. There were no bombs in Samsungs tower, no poisonous explosions, no shootings, no crystal night. There was only that quiet dormant virus, spreading silently from one person to another, insidiously latching itself inside the most sensitive human organ.

Samsung tower dominated Seoul, an icicle rising from clustered silver buildings, connecting the heavens to earth in its mirrored windows. The wealth of United Korea was in its people: brilliant, poised, diplomatic communicators. Private industry and government invested in the advancement of United Korea’s primary resource, and at the vibrant center of that development was the merging of machines and men.

Each Korean citizen was implanted with mechanical discs that gave him or her access to an instant encyclopedia of knowledge and the full vocabulary of seven world languages. At the age of one year, each child could speak fluently, and the effect was eerie and magnificent. Within a few years, Korean teenagers were babbling in several languages simultaneously, the slang a sharp mixed tongue impossible for all but the most brilliant of linguists to follow. Within two generations, the world was relying on Korea for diplomats, programmers, managers, entertainers, businessmen and bankers. They said that to speak with a Korean was to open a library of world knowledge.

In sixty seconds on October 1st, the virus hatched from its incubation and destroyed the precious language center in each implanted mind. Some say that it was a group of Americans who did the job, angry that Samsung closed its U.S. offices and left them without work. Others claim it was done by religious conservatives, taking a hard line on the controversial issues surrounding the modification of the mind.

Stuttered half-words, grunts and screams ripped through the country. On conference calls business leaders grabbed their throats and shook their heads, their brains feeding meaning without words. Confusion and terror leaped from village to village; riots, mass hysteria and suicides swept the country. Terrible crashes occurred as transportation officials failed to communicate with each other. The minister of finance, at the age of 98, the oldest man in government, managed to reach out over international lines, flexing the muscles he had not used for 70 years as he cried across the oceans of the world. Help. Help.

During that silent time there were acts of great compassion. Mothers sang wordlessly to their children; strangers touched comforting hands on the street; lovers watched each other’s faces with new curiosity. The nation searched for meaning in the flickered expressions, the skin and eyes, the lip, the head. In a world dominated by screens, by virtual imitation, the forced exile from language made the people turn to each other. The heroes of that time go unrecorded, for they were all silent. Aid workers came, blue helmets and students from every continent on earth, coming to teach the ancient words. They expected chaos, but they found a new world.

I’ve been expecting you. You’re going to ask me if I’ve heard what the Fleet of Ages found on their return trip. I have. Wasn’t surprised when I heard it, either.

I never could wait. That was my problem. That was a failing we all shared.

I used to think that, more than any man, I understood the consequences of what those ships were supposed to bring back. When they launched I remember writing how I had a sense of apprehension; fear, but also pride. “Much the same way a lifelong gem miner must feel as he watches his sons go down that selfsame shaft.” Those were my words.

So I suppose I had no comprehension at all.

When I started mining the future, did I ever expect this? What could I have expected, if not this? You cannot take from the future and be ignorant of the past. We learned that now, too late. And we will pay the price of that lesson soon enough.

The Fleet of Ages, the Ships of Tomorrowall those other wondrous names your colleagues gave them. Not even when I brought back the technology that would allow such a colossal expedition into the future, did I imagine this. It’s just there were no signs. Not until it was too late.

Taking from the future seemed to be the one thing that defied the law of diminishing returns. Indeed, it seemed to flaunt it. Each time I traveled and looted, things would be different, though my destination time never changed. The future would always be brighter, more wondrous, filled more technological marvels for me to take back. We were able to progress without the work of it. After each trip, the present started further ahead.

Naturally, the Fleet of Ages was developed. It was the equivalent of strip-mining the future; we knew that. But we were certain that the advances we brought back would make the future more fertile. It always had before.

And such wonders the Fleet brought back! Such treasure! Such amazing advances! We were so proud of them, weren’t we? So proud. We were going to be gods before our time.

I never could wait. As soon as the Fleet came back, I had take another trip. I had to see, as soon as possible, what kind of fruit our actions had produced.

So I knew before everyone else the barren horror that is now the future.

We will not learn the lessons necessary for the proper use of what those ships have brought back. And we will misuse them. We are children playing with grenades; our destruction is inevitable

So concerned were we with what the future could give us, we lost sight of what we had to do in the present, to prepare. Because we couldn’t wait.

And now our time is past.

for my mother

Dan Huckabee was the type of guy that nobody liked at parties, unless it was a party filled with the same type of guy that Dan Huckabee happened to be. He talked too much. Some people talk too little at parties, and nobody likes them, but nobody liked a guy who went on and on like Dan Huckabee either. It wasn’t that he rambled; nobody liked a rambler, but that wasn’t what Dan Huckabee was. He was a man with a passion, and he would tell everyone he met about that passion for hours on end, whether they cared to hear it or not.

Dan Huckabee was an archivist. It was his job to collect the old, outdated forms of records that had been stored for ages in the silent halls of the Library of Congress and air them out; he scanned them, preserved them, and kept history straight. He turned books into memory chips, magazines into CDs, and audio tapes into soundsticks. He was a natural. Whatever form the information took, you could always count on Dan Huckabee to save everything that a less careful archivist might have discarded as useless. That was why he’d been hired. After the old Library of Congress had been unearthed from the decades-old rubble left over from the war, the New World Government had chosen Dan Huckabee to unearth and preserve its troubled past. The problem was getting him to shut up about it.

A favorite topic of Dan Huckabee’s was heroes. There were lots of heroes in the old times, he said. People used to stand out back then. People used to be noticed. That was real living. His sister remarked privately that Dan Huckabee was noticed frequently; it just wasn’t in a positive light. He didn’t seem to care. No, Dan Huckabee would persist in attending parties despite the declining cordiality of the invitations and tell people what it was like to live in ancient times, times when one man could change the world.

He told stories of wars, of conquests, of civil rights movements and stirring court cases. He told stories of political coups and new scientific breakthroughs. He told anyone who would listen (and even those who wouldn’t) about President Madison, who stood up to the War Hawks in Congress and prevented a disastrous conflict with Canada; about Wang Weilin, who single-handedly halted the progress of encroaching tanks and allowed thousands of political protesters to escape Tiananmen Square unharmed; and Alger Hiss, who stood up to his enemy McCarthy and proved triumphantly that he was not a red spy. Dan Huckabee told the stories of heroes. He never let the disinterested stares or blank looks he got stop him.

Late at night Dan Huckabee would go through the papers he was sent by the government, red pen always moving to cross out or underline or scribble a few notes. Other men would not have put so many hours into a government job, a dead-end labor with little pay and fewer benefits, but Dan Huckabee was a dedicated man. When he saw the readouts of the new history books with the great names of Madison and Wang and Hiss in big bold letters he felt a stir of pride in his heart. He was a man who stood up for his beliefs, a maker of heroes and a teller of truths. He had never called himself a hero, but when he gazed on his work with satisfaction he breathed to word under his breath for inspiration. Dan Huckabee was a hero. Dan Huckabee was a man who could change the world.

“Damn, we’re in a tight spot!”

Simon had never seen a more troublesome mentor in all of his training. He just sat wide-eyed with two suitcases in his arms, stuffed behind a pile of debris from their bridge-port fight, his legs poking out. Simon’s maverick mentor Alabaster Jones was firing a X347 over the cover at the raining ion flames of the entire Solar Flare drug cartel of New San Diego. Simon began to wonder just how a simple trip to the baggage claim at the space-port had gotten him into this situation.

“Frag! I’m out of juice! This fight needs to get dirtier. Hey, Squire! Squire!” A beefy hand slapped poor Simon on the back of his head, making him blink.

“Yes?” He narrowed his eyes up at the flamboyant eye of the storm.

“Pay attention, kid!” he said as another ion blast disintegrated dust just beyond them on another pillar of concrete. “I need that Microsoft Assault 4 from the blue case. And on the double!” Simon hurriedly unsnapped the case and tugged out the green-hued sleek, rifle-like weapon and handed it up to Jones. Jones snagged the gun and began blasting. A flare of red issued from the muzzle of the plasma weapon, shading them both.

“Jesus!” Jones ducked back behind the cover and shoved the gun at Simon, “I said A4! Not P1! I just sank a hole the size of a football field in the bridge!” Simon began to apologize but Jones just grabbed the blue steel weapon from the case and loaded it, his back hugging the rubble.

“Hm. Wonder if that bridge will hold. Kid, better grab the Smith and Wesson Auto-Fletch. We might be making a run.”

Simon had the balls to slam the blue case shut and tug the gray one up on top. “What in God’s name did you do to piss these guys off?” He tugged the dull gray weapon, relatively small in comparison, from the case. Easily gripped in one hand, the multi-barreled flchette would serve him well while Jones continued to lay waste to armies with the A4.

“What?” Jones winced as the loud roar of the Assault 4 plugged them good. The smart-shells were doing their job: getting rid of the cars they were using for cover. He yelled down at Simon. “Oh, well suffice to say, kid, you shouldn’t sleep with any woman you meet at a smuggling bar! Well, that and steal cargo.” More rumbling from the weapon of choice, and Jones looked satisfied, “Yeah, that should buy us some time.”

He switched out the smart-shell with a concentrated ray-beam complete with microwave sequencing. Sneaking a peak back over the cover, he grumbled and looked to Simon. He was sitting with a gun in his lap and a look of complete frustration and comedic anger on his face. “Kid… I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but… looks like they brought a Sony Atomizer, ’75 model. And, well… they’re aiming it at the structure.”

Simon sneered and mockingly aimed the flchette at Jones before his shaky hand fell back to his lap. Jones only poured salt onto the wound.

“I hope you can swim, kid.”

A professor of mine once said that creativity was the last resort of losers.

That it was an evolutionary quirk, of no more merit than a giraffe’s elongated neck or a platypus’s duckbill. That from an evolutionary standpoint, creativity was not worth mentioning, and worth even less compared to something like flight.

Speaking of which, here. Take this. Remember to breathe deep.

You’ve imagined what it would be like, right? Sure, we all have. What it would feel like to be up there. Unencumbered by some claustrophobic airplane. To be actually flying.

Yeah, no, man. That’s perfectly normal. Just breathe deep. It’ll pass.

But, yeah. We’ve all thought that. Like we belong up there. Like the fall from the Garden of Eden is more literal than we ever thought. That flight is really just an evolutionary step away.

You’re feeling it now, aren’t you? Move your arms. Isn’t that amazing?

What my professor never understood is that evolution is slow and random. That its approval is not something we should strive for.

Not when creativity can grab evolution by the balls.

Your system should have adjusted by now. Welcome to a whole new point of view.

Ready for lift-off?

On rainy days, on days when the air smelled like ozone and soot and water fell swollen with chronoradiation, Anton climbed to the roof of the tallest building in Pripyat to watch the sun peel the clouds from the horizon at sunset. The first nine blocks were easy: he pushed the girl ahead of him in a rusted shopping cart. The stairs were more difficult, but he’d fashioned a sling out of an old backpack to secure the girl to his back. The whole ordeal took nearly three hours, so he always started early. Unfortunately, because the stairwell was windowless and he had no way to measure time, sometimes the sky was already dark when he opened the door to the roof.

Anton thought of the girl as Antonina, though he’d never learned her name. Like most of the shadow children, her metabolism had slowed after the incident, and any physical aging in the last decade was negligible. Her body was eighteen months old, he estimated. There was no way to know if her brain grew in body time or thought time, but he fancied that she was nearly eleven behind those dark eyes. That was how old his daughter had been.

The front left wheel of the cart screeched with every revolution. Anton used it to keep his footsteps in rhythm. Every three shrieks, he leaned hard against the plastic rail to shift his weight from his leg. It was two thousand and twenty six steps to the building, but only one thousand and thirteen of them were painful. The injury was relatively minor—a ligament torn during a game of tag with his daughter—but, like Antonina, his body moved in Pripyat time and it could take decades for the tissue to knit.

Above them, the dim patch of light inched towards the horizon and the first shade of smog-soaked red spilled over the empty village. Anton estimated it would take another hour to make it to the roof, which put them perfectly on schedule with the darkening sky.

As he walked, Anton hummed a song he’d picked up in the university pubs of Moscow back when his wife had been his girlfriend and his daughter had been a laughable impossibility. When Antonina’s chubby face opened into a broad grin, Anton tried to sing the chorus. Most of the words had been forgotten, and his syllables washed ahead like echoes swirling over the sooty streets.

“Did you hear about the breakout on the southside?” Alison twisted her head around to watch Misty pulling off her decontamination helmet, which emitted a soft suction sound as her head popped out of the air-tight seal.

“What? I couldn’t hear you through this. You know I hate it when you do that.” Misty shook out her brown hair and went to sit at the kitchen bar, taking a deep breath, breathing in the viral air. She felt it take effect as her hands lay palm-flat on the surface, feeling the sticky texture of the unwashed counter top.

“I said, did you hear about the breakout? The Government is all over it. They brought a tankard of Influenza.” Alison said it matter-of-factly, but in reality she was scared of whatever would take a tankard of Influenza to get rid of. Her hands fidgeted in her lap as she looked at the dull glow of the television.

Misty was getting used to her new disease. She bit her lip as she tried to pour herself some bacteria, her breath a bit broken by the viruses running through her system. “S-so what did they say about us? What about East Town? Are there any left?”

“Antibiotics? No. They found a case of Vioxx and two or three instances of Prozac, but nothing to be scared of, hon.”

Misty was relaxed now, allowing her body to give way, and she just smiled at the knowledge that outside was going to be safe soon. Her fingers tugged the cup of soiled water towards her and she sipped it, tasting the tangy, bitter fluid.

She sighed at the taste and opened her clear blue eyes. “You need to get some more Flu tonight. We’re all out and you know how I hate going to work without Flu. I get all shaky and shit…”

Alison was paying attention to the sore on her arm where the flesh-eating virus had been working, and she picked at it once or twice. She was barely able to hear that Misty had spoken, she was so transfixed. “Huh? Yeah, yeah… look, I’m trying to save up to get us some new Pox. You know the news said that Pox is curing Zantac and Antibiotics on the East coast. I wanna try it out.”

Misty coughed and then felt her lungs get tight. It was a good sign. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find on my way to work tomorrow.”

Carol laughed, her plump cheeks rising over tiny eyes. “Admit it, you’re a genius.”

Jude shook his head and his dark silky hair slipped over his pale face. “I do okay, but I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.”

Carol smirked and put her hands on her fleshy hips. “How about Renaissance man? Come on! When you were seventeen you conducted experiments on global warming with Nobel Prize winners.”

He smiled rakishly. “It wasn’t just global warming. The simulations were dealing with the negative environmental effects of mankind on the planet. There were hundreds of variables involved; global warming was just one of them.”

Carol leaned on the bar. “Right, then you decided that wasn’t enough and you switched to medicine.”

Jude shrugged. “No one cares about the environment. It was too depressing to watch simulations of humanity killing itself.” Jude scowled, imagining his great grandchildren burning. “Besides, there is more money in viral research.”

Carol wiped her sweaty hands on her square skirt, a piece of clothing that looked like it was pulled from her grandmother’s closet. “Sure, yeah, you’re curing the worlds illnesses for the money.” Carol put her wide hand on Jude’s shoulder. He smiled flatly and pulled away. Carol grinned back at him, freckles stretching on her cheeks. “On top of all this professional stuff, you conduct those martial arts and survival skills workshops on weekends.”

Jude put down his beer. “That’s just for friends, it’s nothing big.”

“Right. Nothing.” Carol looked at their friends, smoking and drinking around the bar. “If I didn’t know any better Jude, I would say you were building an army.” Carol giggled, and Jude’s face went blank and grey, like a shut off television screen. He laughed a moment later, a hollow, dark sound. Carol’s eyes widened. She knew, and it was his fault.

Later that night, Jude went to see her, holding a bottle of old red wine in his hands. Carol’s house was cluttered, dried paint stains, magazine clippings and fabric in piles around the floor. It was two AM and she was drowsy, her eyes puffed and sleepy. She let him in and asked him what was wrong.

Jude had been crying.

He opened and poured the wine without asking. They drank as he told her everything she wanted to hear. Her face beamed, suddenly and unexpectedly pretty. Then she sputtered, wine dripping down her chin as she tumbled out of her chair and landed heavily on the carpet. Her body was heavy and soft, her nails trimmed and painted. Jude ran the tub and set her inside, gently laying her head on the ceramic. He hoped that Carol had drunk enough of the sedative that she would stay under.

Jude told himself that when they rebuilt the world, he will tell them about her, how she died to protect the secret of his plan. They would erect monuments in her name; he would see to that. After the plague his handpicked civilization would all know the truth. They would call her the mother of peace. The children might not know her face, but they would appeal to her as a saint. He told her this in the bathroom, her body slipping again and again under the warm water.

It surprised him how much it took to cut her flesh. It bent like rubber wrinkles around the razorblade. He had to try over and over before he punctured the skin, pressing hard against freckled meat. Blood slipped over her arm and under his fingernails. His hands were shaking. Jude sawed against the skin, grinding his teeth. This was for everyone.

In the evenings I would go into the studio, tablet in hand, and sit there for hours, just sketching. My husband had bought me a full-wall screen for our last anniversary, finally giving in to the idea that without my art, we wouldn’t have had a marriage. After twenty-two years, it was an admirable concession to make. I would turn the lights down low and let the soft light of the screen illuminate my face as I sketched. I liked the way the color of the room changed as I painted, bathing me in whatever mood I wanted to create. The big screen was the best present anyone had ever given me, though I’m sure my husband regretted it more than once when I spent sleepless nights in the studio. He never complained, though, and I appreciated that.

My gallery was on 23rd and Spruce, in the New City, with some of the highest resolution displays in the business. Naturally it wasn’t an exclusive gallery, but since my pieces sold better than anyone else’s they tended to give me most of the showings. I sold some prints, but only on rare occasions; for the most part, I sold chips, compatible with any screen of appropriate quality and etched for uniqueness. My husband used to grumble that I made more in a day than he did in a week, but since I only sold pieces once or twice a fortnight I considered us even.

It was late January when I saw the painting. It was at a hanging in one of the offshoot galleries, one that I had stopped into on a whim on a cold, dirty-snow afternoon. The room was small and subtly lit. The first thing I noticed was that the screens the paintings were on hadn’t been coordinated to illuminate the works. I frowned and stepped closer, meaning to take a better look before going to the gallery manager to expose such an appalling lack of foresight, but gasped instead. The paintings weren’t displayed on screens. The texture on them was real, not a clever illusion. At first I was appalled. How dare someone hang paintings that were made with real paint? That didn’t take talent! It was like cheating. I opened my mouth to tell someone, anyone, of this terrible deception, but she spoke and my words went unvoiced.

“Would you like to touch it?”

I gaped at the woman behind me, open-mouthed. She was small, thinner than I was, with square glasses and a little button nose and a round face ringed by hair that was dyed a quiet silver. Her smile was as small as her frame. “Go ahead, Lily. That’s what it’s there for.”

My mind reeled at the fact that she knew my name, forgetting that everybody knew my name in the art scene, but I reached out all the same, running my fingertips over the canvas. I could feel every smoothness and every imperfection. I could feel the texture of the canvas where the color was thin and the thickness of the paint where she had gone over something more than once. It was dynamic, breathtaking; a three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional frame. I’m not sure when she left, but when I finally lifted my fingers, I was alone in the gallery.

That night I smashed my screen. I threw a vase into itsomething antique, I thinkand smiled with satisfaction. I’d changed my mind. The vase was the best present anyone had ever given me.

Jemai’s skin was the color of water, which is to say it was hardly a color at all. Her body was a milky grey that took on a blue or green tint in certain lights, and when Thomas’s warm fingers traced her hip bones they left a trail of amber in their wake. He loved the way her skin reacted to heat. If he moved his finger slowly enough he could trace words across her stomach, and when he couldn’t sleep he wrote love songs into her one letter at a time.

Jemai read them, but she never replied.

As Thomas touched her she stared at the ceiling, her dark eyes searching out the darkest corners as if she had left something in their depths. She inhaled once for every five of his breaths, and the oxygen-drenched air forced its fingers into her lungs the same way his fingers forced their way into her stomach. Everything on Earth left a heavy residue, she’d learned. When she watched her skin change color beneath his fingertips, she imagined that her body was rubbing away. If he kept at it she might disappear. Sometimes she wished that she would.

On Ayta, the dark sky danced with the colors of a healing bruise when solar flares licked its heights. Behind them stars poured out across the thin atmosphere like beads of oil on water, and some days she slept outside to keep watch, as if all of it might be gone the next morning. “Don’t be silly,” Daik used to tell her as he pulled her body against his and stroked her forehead with his slender thumb. Her skin hadn’t changed at her lover’s warmth. Their bodies had been the same temperature.

When the Terrans came for Ayta’s fuel, Daik had been among the first recruited to defend their resources. He left without ceremony, smiling his usual knowing half-grin. “Keep safe for me,” he’d said.

Shifts changed, but Daik never came home. Three years later, the ceiling of Thomas’s room was starless and still, the room’s silence broken only by the sound of his rapid Terran breathing. She’d been saved from the fuel mines, she told herself, and repeated it like a mantra as his fingers traced their usual path around her navel. She was safe. She was safe.

Thomas sighed blissfully and settled his body against hers as he prepared for sleep. Jemai exhaled for as long as she could, forcing every atom of the thick Earth air from her lungs. She was safe. Thomas’s room had no windows, but in the darkest shadows she pretended she could see Ayta’s sun shimmer like a pearl in an oily sea.

It’s the first day of the site and, wouldn’t you know, it’s the day our host is having technical difficulties. Apologies to anyone who’s been having trouble accessing the site–you’re not the only one. In more positive news, we’d like to thank the ever-enlightening Warren Ellis for mentioning us on his blog and welcome all the new readers to 365. We’re glad to have you.

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