365 tomorrows

With each stroke of the knife, I knew he loved me.

It started with my nipples, him telling me how much he loved me and how sexy I would look without them. He touched my face as he did it, cooing and kissing my forehead and telling me how much he loved me. He kissed away every one of my tears and held me within his powerful arms as I bled.

For six weeks there was no mention of knives. My heart leapt every time he looked at me, a joy and longing in his eyes. The six weeks after I gave up my nipples were quite possibly the happiest of my entire life.

But the seventh and eighth and ninth passed, and he grew distant, moody. He would spend nights away from the house and return drunken and grumbling. One night, I asked what was wrong, and what I could do to help him.

And so the knives came out again.

He shaved my head, including my eyebrows that night. Soon after, all of my hair from my body was removed through his amateur electrolysis. He took off my nose with one clean slice and, using a device I didn’t recognize, sealed up the wound and made it smooth to the touch, as if nothing had ever been there. I could only breathe through my mouth, and told him so, panicking. He just smiled, kissed the smoothness in the center of my face, and told me I was beautiful.

My toes and fingers took nearly two months, one joint at a time. He took similar relish with each of my teeth. He said he was sad when he went for my crotch, but I saw how happy his eyes were and how his hands shook with arousal as he smoothed out my groin.

He used that same device to seal off my sockets after he cut out my eyes. He also used it to fuse my ass cheeks, and later, my mouth leaving only a small hole in each case. I heard him laugh and tell me how sexy I looked. He kissed me all over, and made jokes about how easy it would now be to confuse my two ends. He sounded so happy.

One night—or what I assumed was night, at the very least—he drew a heart on my smooth chest with his finger. He told me it meant “I love you.” Then he cut off my ears.

Between long stretches of nothing, I would suck vitamin-enriched water from a straw he would press against lips and feel his strong fingers all over what was left of my naked body. I was too weak to react physically, but I reveled in his touch and the way traced that heart on my chest over and over. My life was spent this way, waiting for these moments.

It is difficult to love a being from another planet, but there are sacrifices to be made in every relationship. And now my alien lover will never leave me.

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Peter did not remember the first time he used the displacement generator. That was how it should be, of course. When used properly, the generator always erased the traces of itself. If it didn’t, a person could get tangled up in time, strangled by tethers of conflicting memory. So when he woke up in the white room, surrounded by lights and wires and the generator’s dull whirr, it used to take Peter several minutes to get his spatial and temporal bearings. Not anymore, though. Now, he had a few shortcuts.

When he came to, the first thing his eyes settled upon was the sheet of paper taped to a wire over his bed. He snatched it, squinting at the broad, circular letters. Your name is Peter Graham. You are a displacement technician. You are thirty seven years old.

The statements continued, and gradually, Peter’s memory spilled into the places that were blank when he first woke up. He had two sisters. He lived with his girlfriend and their daughter Sarah. He played tennis. By lunchtime, he’d overcome most of the amnesia of temporal shock.

“What’s it today, mate?” asked the portly, graying man across the table at the complex’s cafeteria.

“What?”

“I’m Will.”

Peter didn’t remember anything about Will, but he unfolded the paper to double check. Nope. Nothing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll come back in a few hours.”

Will nodded and peeled the plastic wrap from around his sandwich before taking a large bite of synthetic tuna. He chewed this thoughtfully, then put the sandwich back on the table and snatched the paper from Peter’s fingers. “Peter Graham,” he read. “Nice. You’ve got a kid.”

Peter nodded. Odd man. Years of doing this made some people go a little strange.

“You working this afternoon?” Will asked. “Check the schedule.” He pointed to a large display on an adjacent wall, and Peter stood up to find his name. It was nothing but numbers.

“I don’t remember it being like this before,” Peter said. Will chuckled.

“Check your arm,” he said. Peter did. At the base of his wrist, a seven digit number showed in crisp black ink. “They can’t do that kind of thing by names, for obvious reasons.”

Peter found his number and followed it across the glowing chart. “I’m working the French Revolution,” he said.

“Fun.”

He continued examining the schedule, picking out what he’d be doing for the next few days. “Hey,” he noticed, “Why do I have a dormitory number?”

“Huh?”

“They have here that I’m supposed to sleep in section 17-F.”

“Well, then you sleep in 17-F.”

“What about my girlfriend and kid?” Peter said. He dimly remembered promising her that he’d take her out for dinner tonight. Was it their anniversary? Her birthday, maybe. Will laughed.

“See you at dinner,” he said as he pushed away from the table. “Maybe you’ll be Pierre by then.”

Greetings, denizens of cyberspace!

We are officially multi-lingual! Portions of 365 are currently being translated into Korean and Spanish. If you’d like to translate into another language, please, drop me a line with a link to your site and it’ll show up in our next newspost. We enjoy imposing ourself on the rest of the world…especially me, since, as a TEFL teacher, I’m surrounded by people who I can’t pimp the site to because of language conflicts.

Also, we now offer the convenient, enticing, and morally compelling option to donate to 365. Yes, asking for donations is slightly skeevy, but the fact is we put a lot of money (over $600) into starting up the site, and I’d really like to pay off at least some of the debt. Of course, the stories will keep coming no matter what, but we’d definitely appreciate your help. In fact, I’ll send you a postcard from China and a nifty business card if you donate $5 or more (send your address to moi).

Because I’m asking you for money, I feel ethically obligated to inform you that 365 has been approved for Google’s AdSense program, so in a few days, you’ll see that unobtrusive sidebar on our main page. We will, however, never use tacky banners or anything that detracts from the nice layout that Matt was kind enough to create for us at a price slightly lower than peanuts. AdSense has a decent setup which, as I said, is rather subtle and targeted to the audience…not to mention that we get a decent cut every time you click on a link which will further help us get out of that aforementioned debt.

On the subject of banners, here’s a nice piece I’ve cooked up for you if you’d like to pimp our site. J Loseth was kind enough to write this c/p-able code:

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That’s all for today. Thanks, loyal readers, for following our site. This project has been far more successful than I anticipated, and I really appreciate everything you guys have done for us.

Outside the dome, the earth was sealed with cement; the towers of processed plastic, retrieved from the treasure chests of ancient dumps, grew, broke and branched like mad metal trees. The glimmering city sang in a constant low thrum, tiny machines building additions, remodeling for the new and the better, ever evolving, unfinished. The man made cold swept over the hard city, sending citizens running for manufactured warmth and longing for a past that never was.

Inside the dome, the wild Villia embraced herself under thousands of watching eyes who longed for her natural paradise. The constructed environment bore her food and cradled her in eternal summer. Villia thrilled before her invisible admirers, stretched herself in the gaze of the gods of her wide Eden. On neon screens she, natural goddess, worshipped by the clicking of tiny insecticide cameras, smiled at a field of tiny yellow flowers, imagining them as her followers, faces rising, bright and delicate.

The walls of Maria Gracia Plana’s prison had long since fallen, the building having crumbled along with the Empire that constructed it. The planet’s wealth and populace have gone, leaving it boundless and bare, a relic of times long past. Maria Gracia Plana’s guards have left her, after she broke the leg of the one who tried to rape her and the skull of the one who was going to watch. The walls were gone but she remained, writing letters to the outside worlds.

But they were no longer letters, not since the Blight. They were now nothing more than a series of apologies. Apologies to her people, who believed in her and her revolution. Apologies to her revolution, for not being strong enough to defend its ideals. Apologies to the dead.

In an open prison, Maria Gracia Plana wrote apologies those lost in the war that she started and the Blight that followed and hoped it would ease their weight off her shoulders.

She was engaged in this activity when the spaceman arrived. His Imperial uniform was disheveled and torn, but his bearing and movements betrayed a life spent in space, a life used to conserving everything.

“Maria Gracia Plana,” he said. “Still here?”

“There is a war on. I am a prisoner of war.” Maria did not look up from her tablet; she had apologies to write.

“War’s over. You won.”

“I did not! I never wanted the Blight. I never asked for it. If I wasn’t here, it would never have been used! Mass murder was never what I wanted.”

“Know. Read your letters.”

“You read my…” Maria managed to tear her eyes away from her tablet. “Who are you?”

“Nadir Faruqi. Captain, Galactic Imperial Fleet. Only, Empire done gone. Just Captain, ‘spose.”

“And you, no doubt a romantic, have come to rescue me, is that right? Well, I am dreadfully sorry, Captain Faruqi, but I have no desire to be saved.” Maria returned her attention to her tablet, and the apologies it contained. The spaceman merely stood stock still, another rock amid the ruins of Maria’s prison.

“Not here to save you. Here to save worlds. Empire done gone. Chaos, now. Blight done that. But so did you. So did I.” The spaceman touched the grip of the blaster that was strapped to his hip. He shifted his weight as he did so, as if the weapon had suddenly grown heavier.

“You’re here to remind me that I’ve failed, is that it? I don’t need you to tell me that! I thought I was being a martyr when I was arrested. I didn’t know then that martyrs are dead, and the dead can’t speak. So when the people you trusted decide to release a devastatingly lethal on the enemy, no one will hear you cry ‘no.’”

“That’s gone. Can’t change, so let go. Worlds need you.”

“I am dead! Don’t you understand? I am dead! No one will hear me except the dead, and all I can do is apologize to them! That’s all I can do! I am dead! Can you hear me? I AM DEA—”

The spaceman placed his hand over Maria’s mouth. It was not an act of violence or anger. Merely frustration, which was echoed in his eyes, black as space itself.

“Not dead. The dead done gone. You’re here. Worlds need you. Was an Imperial Captain. Fought and killed for Empire. But never believed in. Saw much Empire as Captain. Nothing to believe in. Until you. You had a better way. Empire mighty, but not in your eyes. Your passion…your grace. Believed in that. Worlds…I…need you to be worth your name.”

The spaceman withdrew his had from Maria’s mouth, and held it in front of her, ready to lift her up out of the dust.

The walls of Maria Gracia Plana’s prison had long since fallen, the building having crumbled along with the Empire that constructed it. The planet’s wealth and populace have gone, leaving it boundless and bare, a relic of times long past. All that remains are her apologies, and the dead.

The thousand babies slept in the high, dry grass as late summer breezes caressed their cradles. Local farmers, paid by the government not to grow food, had abandoned the field and left their farm equipment to rust. The summer had been blazing and the ground cracked under the oppressive sun. For the babies, the heat had been ideal, the same as if they had been tucked under their mothers belly. They swayed inside their hard cradles, rocking themselves in and out of dreams. Their mother thought of them always, they could hear her bright thoughts, even from far away, and knew that they were not alone.

In early autumn, when the weather was still warm but the breeze hinted at an approaching winter, the children crawled out of their cradles. The tiny ones were eaten by their stronger siblings, mewing inside broken cradles that were unable to protect them from razor beaks and sucking orifices. The children played, pecking at each other, snapping at autumn leaves, burrowing in the earth and launching themselves a hundred feet into the sky before gliding downwards back to the wild field. Each little explorer listened for the voice of the mother, trying to pin-point that invisible light in the sky from where her voice came. Food came to the field, tempted by the whistling voices, and the children ate together.

Mother’s giant mind, a processor of incomprehensible power, sent the children loving thoughts and strict commands. When they were too big for the field, having ripped the brittle grass and wet the ground, they spread their scaled wings and leaped, soaring towards a higher, bigger playground, a city of steel and glass, glittering in a twilight haze.

“So you see,” Bigsby slurred, “So you see, that’s why we’re better than you.”

“No,” Jack replied, “I don’t see at all.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll explain it again. It’s like this. The beer, see–” He held up his own glass for demonstration. “The beer is the Earthmen. And these pretzels, well, the pretzels and the wings and the soda, those are all the colonies.”

“So the colonies are the substantial portion of the menu.”

“But the beer is why people come to the bar. Ya gotta have the beer to spice it up a bit.”

“But that’s why people eat the pretzels,” Jack pointed out blandly. “Because they don’t want to feel the effects of the alcohol. Most of the colonies have outlawed beer entirely,” he pointed out, sipping his own Coke in quiet superiority. He hoped immigration would be next on the list.

“But that’s my point! That’s exactly my point.” Bigsby leaned forward, his watery eyes sparkling. “Back here on Earth, why do people drink alcohol?”

“Because they don’t know any better and they don’t want to change.”

“Wrong. That’s not it at all. They do it because they want change. Thank you,” Bigsby added to the bartender, who had just refilled his glass.

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“It’s true. Listen. Why do frat boys drink beer at parties?”

“What do you do for a living?” Jack cut in. He regarded Bigsby like some kind of rare bug specimen.

“I’m an out of work politician.”

Jack sighed. That meant he wouldn’t get out of this without hearing the whole lecture. At least it would make a great scathing editorial when he got back to Mars. “All right, go on. Why do frat boys drink beer at parties? Aside from the obvious answers of immaturity and poor upbringing.”

“Forget the frat boys, then. Why does anyone drink alcohol? Why does a perfectly sane, well-kempt, mature Earthman go out for a pint with his mates? Because he wants things to change. He wants to push the boundaries, wants to test the limits of himself. He wants to put himself in an abnormal situation and see if he gets an abnormal response. In short, he wants stimulus, and that’s something the colonies are never going to have.” Bigsby gestured widely with his glass, sloshing a respectable amount of beer onto the bar. “What’s the last innovation the colonies have come up with? The latest invention? Have there been any?”

Jack glowered at the increasingly annoying Earthman. “You can’t possibly be saying that an era of peace, prosperity, and enlightenment is a bad thing. Our laws are the best in the universe. They promote the way of life that we want to live.”

“Conflict is a catalyst,” Bigsby replied, eyes widening in an attempt to look wise. Jack remembered it as a catch phrase on the cover of the latest USA Today.

“Don’t go looking for work on Mars,” he told Bigsby shortly, setting the money for his drink on the bar.

“Stay on Earth a while,” Bigsby called after him from the barstool. “I’ll take you out. We’ll go watch pro wrestling!”

Jack was already writing the editorial in his head.

I’d like to thank the students in Professor Connelly’s class at Camden County Community College in New Jersey for allowing me the pleasure of guest lecturing there this afternoon. This isn’t the sort of thing I normally do, but I appreciate it all the same. It’s the first time I’ve given live readings for any of my 365 work, and I hope that the attendees enjoyed it as much as I did. Welcome to any CCCC students who are just discovering this site.

That being said, if any 365 readers out there attend or instruct in an academic venue (or a non-academic venue, for that matter) where guest lectures are common, let us know if you want to try to arrange something. You can email me or get in touch with any of the other 365 writers via the email links in our bios. We’ll probably be far more able to accomodate requests in the greater Philadelphia and New York City area at this time, but we’re willing to listen to other proposals as well.

In other news, it has come to my attention that 365 tomorrows is currently generating traffic of approximately 20,000 hits each day, 5,000 of which are unique. That’s very exciting for all of us, and we’d like to thank everyone who reads 365 every day. We’ve also got nearly a hundred registered users on our forums, some of whom have been very active, and a lot of great discussion goes on there every day. Check it out if you haven’t yet had the chance.

Lastly, I’ve heard through the grapevine that we are being translated into Korean. I don’t have details on this yet, but keep a lookout for the full story.

Seventeen years ago, when I returned from the Europa colony, I was asked to give a speech at a middle school assembly. For two hours I talked about recycling. Recycled air, recycled food, recycled water. We throw things away here, but there, everything is recycled.

This kid comes up to me afterwards, a little girl of maybe twelve, and she asks, what’s it like to have less gravity?

I chuckled. It’s lighter, I told her.

No, she said, without a smile. What’s it really like?

I watched her for a few seconds. Her eyes were narrow like she was looking into the sun, and I swear I’ve never seen a kid so intent on knowing something. It was like I had the answers for the most important test she’d ever take.

I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, gravity is gravity. More gravity is heavier, less gravity is lighter. There isn’t much room for elaboration. In the end, I told her that it felt like going downhill on a roller coaster, but that wasn’t true at all. It’s much more peaceful, more still. Everything moves slower up there. Even time.

Now, sometimes I watch the moon and I think, that’s what Europa looks like from a shuttle. I wouldn’t say I miss it, though. I never went back to the colony, and now I’m past the mandatory age limit for space travel. It’s like a roller coaster, I told her. You must be this young to ride this attraction.

I wonder if that little girl ever made it. They say that, in a few decades, everyone on Earth will be recycled.

We think large. We may be small creatures to you, but our lives extend far beyond the miniscule moments you possess. We think large, and we think long.

Have you ever looked at a mosquito, closely? It’s a strange shape, all hunched over and crooked. Even by your insect standards, it is a bizarre creature. And you never realized. It’s one of the few insects that survive your winters. Did you ever wonder why?

It was us, of course. We didn’t have to do much; it was already such a glorious creature. And what with that penetrating…what’s the word? Oh, there it is. Proboscis. Lovely word. Proboscis. What with that proboscis, we had the perfect conveyance.

Naturally, you were still too great in number, so a certain degree of population destruction, a bit of “shock and awe,” if you will, was necessary. What was it you called it? Malaria? How…quaint. If the boys in the infantry don’t already know what you call them, I’ll have to tell them. Sounds like a girl you used to have sex with, doesn’t it? “I just met a girl named Malaria…” The things you people think up.

And all this time, you blamed the mosquitoes! Not totally, I see. You called them “carriers.” Too true. What does that make you then, I wonder?

I do apologize for all the mucous that clogged your throat and sinuses, the aching of your muscles, your general weakness for the past few days. I can see that you thought it was a just a cold, but I feel the need to own up. We’ve become so close, after all. It was me. Your nervous system is surprisingly hard to operate.

Tell you what, before we meet up with the rest of the invasion fleet, let’s go find a girl that arouses you and have sex with it. First one we find, huh? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, boy?

Look, I’m trying to be nice, here. I don’t have to be.

After all, your world is ours. From the first time you coughed, you had already lost.

The back of the postcard says “please don’t give up.”

She lives on the seven hundred and thirtieth floor. The elevator takes nineteen minutes to reach the livingfloor, when there is no one else getting on it, which has only happened twice. Otherwise, it takes an extra twenty four seconds at each floor, plus three seconds to resume its maximum speed. Today, it takes twenty seven minutes. She does not mind. She watches the red numbers of the digital clock count off milliseconds.

There are clocks everywhere, so she always knows the time.

The city is an ancient forest of metal and cement, with thick trunks made sooty with exhaust, windows blackened. No one lives on the bottom level, of course. The air down there is toxic. She had been there once, on a field trip, with heavy breathing equipment that gasped and wheezed oxygen into the helmet of the protective suit. You needed a flashlight down there, even in the daytime. If you stood on the surface and looked up, you couldn’t see the first livingfloor, much less the current one.

The current one is the eighth, she knows.

Today she sits on a metal bench in the park, staring down through the Plexiglas shield to the seventh livingfloor. It is hazy in the grey fog. Above her, the levibots are working on the ninth, which will be completed in four years.

The levibots are not operated by people. People do not operate anything anymore.

There is no one else in the park. There never is, really. People do not move as much. Their rooms are small and white. They can touch the walls with two hands outstretched, usually. If they stretch the other way, their fingers reach the keyboard, which can be pulled onto their lap. The richer people have windows, but windows are seldom necessary. The sky is always dark, this high up. The sun glitters in a puddle of navy blue. The atmosphere is thin. It gets thinner every year. Every foot of altitude. They are climbing to the point where the air disappears.

She finds the postcard between the metal slats of the bench. On the front, there is a picture of a lake that stretched to the horizon, sky smeared with rust as the wide flame of the sun dips into the orange and blue water.

This must be the ocean, she thinks.

Please don’t give up.

She ponders the scrawl, thick smooth swirl of blue ink. Ink, from a pen and not a printer, letters curved and organic. She loves the way that the letter E’s each look different, the way they slip up as the line thins and then vanishes, reappearing at the start of the next word with a fresh fury.

She glances around, but the park is still empty.

She hesitates before climbing to the top of the bench, balancing on the backrest as she reaches over the seven-foot plastic shield and lets the postcard slip from her fingers. It spins, past her face and past her torso and past her feet, down past the livingfloor and into the thick soupy grayness, still falling and falling.

She wonders how long it will take the card to reach the hard surface. She wonders if there is wind down there, tearing through ancient roadways, catching the thick paper and floating it, like a prayer, to some great ocean where the sun still sets.

The way she lets her hair flow in the wind keeps me breathless. She twists and turns as the leaves blow past; an endless dance to an endless life. They say it’s the season for wisdom, heralding a season of death to come. That season has long since past and I’m watching her dance in her tattered dress in the middle of a vacant park. Still, I find myself hesitating at my duty.

Some might say what I do is heartless, but they don’t get to appreciate beauty like I do. They don’t understand what life is until they kill something that shouldn’t be living. They might call up more laws to stop me from doing what I’m doing, but in the end they know a higher power agrees with me. It just reminds me of how they are all just little insects that will never leave their moral homes. I’m the hunter, and I am the artist. Right now, she’s become my muse and my prey. I am beside myself.

Yet, I’m still watching her. I could sit here all day upwind from her and watch her live out what’s left inside of her. Some scientists call it mental twitches, but I know it’s deeper than that. My eyes can’t blink because I’m afraid she might see me and the dance will be over. I’m afraid because I want that beauty in her to last forever even though a part of me knows it won’t. It never does.

Everything is a mix of brown, red and yellow. It’s a miasma of a bitter rainbow but it makes her stand out amongst the color of flames. She might have burned with the rest, but I’m just too happy to be spying on her this moment. Most of them would have stopped by now, smelled the air and realized they weren’t alone. It’s tough to say what they smell like, but I know from experience that it’s not a good scent.

The wind picks up, and now I can see her face. It’s still pretty, still untainted by her affliction and for a moment I am doubtful of my duty. For a second I can loosen my grip on the deadly tool in my grasp. It is only that brief passing of time that I allow myself a semblance of peace, and maybe I’ll pray someday that they all make it back and that this will all be a bad dream. Someday just isn’t today.

She’s wavering now, something I tend to get nervous over. This one is so pretty, so very gorgeous and I wonder if maybe I would have liked her, if maybe before things went sour if I’d had the chance to take her out for coffee and made love to her in a satin-sheeted bed. Her faltering ruins that. It’s the way her step hesitates, the look of that particularly rigid kind of stance that they make just before they go vile. Yes, I can feel the sting of salty tears because I know if this were any other place, any other time; I’d go to hell for doing such a thing.

I have to keep one thought in mind as I tug back the mechanism to load the Remington. This is hell. This is the reckoning. They aren’t alive, and I can’t go back. No, I can’t make her dance again like she did before. The only thing I can do… is put her down and all the others just like her.

“Sex complicates things.” Professor Dawkins looked at Joe, whose broad shoulders nearly touched the sides of his tiny book-lined office. Joe was from one of the Midwestern public schools that concentrated on test scores, leaving students with a broad range of knowledge, but little depth. “Sex adds an extra element to the process of reproduction, and although that allows for greater variance, simplistic asexual reproduction is still the most popular model.”

Joe squirmed in his seat. “So there aren’t any animals that take the best DNA from many individuals in the population to make the best offspring?”

Dawkins wondered what Joe had been reading. “Best DNA? “Best” really isn’t a concept that we use. Would adding more organisms, more genetic variety, increase fitness?” Joe scrunched his forehead and rubbed his brow, a motion which reminded Dawkins of his wife. “Nature favors incremental change. Any major mutations are likely to kill an individual.”

Joe pushed up his glasses. “What if there was a major mutation that was very favorable?”

Dawkins sat on his desk facing Joe and smiled. “I’m not saying that’s impossible Joe, just highly improbable. There are no examples of such an event. Animals are an interactive whole; any major change is likely to have a detrimental effect on that whole.”

“So humans just couldn’t learn to fly or anything.”

Dawkins loosened his collar; the office had become quite warm. “Well, if what you mean is that they couldn’t develop, say, functional wings for flight in a generation, then that is true. In the case of wings, humans might have to develop lighter bones for flight and every change towards lighter bones would have to increase reproductive viability. Each step is a final product in itself.”

Joe ran a hand though his short black hair and bit his lip.” What about on other planets?”

Dawkins blushed, feeling suddenly aroused. “Other planets? I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“Would evolution work the same on other planets?” The office was very hot.

“Well, since we haven’t been to any other planets with life it’s hard to draw any conclusions. Personally, I would speculate that our model of natural selection, variability and heritability would likely be similar for other planets. We recognize evolution as a logical process which separates the chaotic forces of the universe and translates them into the obvious order of an organism. There are several examples of different organs evolving similar structures independently, for example, the eye has evolved independently several times. Light sensitive cells to a concave surface to a lens, each step helping to give an organism a reproductive advantage it’s a good logical design that follows basic rules. “

The book on Joes lap slid onto the floor, but neither of them noticed. “Professor Dawkins, I think you’re just about the smartest man I ever met.”

Dawkins laughed. “What about your friend Jerry. He’s a clever boy, don’t you think?”

Joe blushed. “Er, yes, clever, but that’s different than smart.”

Joe’s hair was soft and short, and it felt lovely between Dawkins fingers. Joe pulled Dawkins toward him, and Dawkins leaned into his touch.

“I think.” Joe said, his cool breath on Dawkins lips “That species on other planets might do things differently.” Joes tongue shot into Dawkins mouth, the buds on his tongue sharp, breaking the skin on the inside of Dawkin’s cheek. Dawkins moaned in a lustful stupor and put a hand on Joe’s broad chest, his ribs like segmented scales.

“They say there is no God in the outer planets! Those who say this clearly do not have any understanding of the Lord and his teachings! They clearly have not been here!”

From deep within in the control deck of “The Laz’rus,” high in standard orbit, Anastasia allowed herself a grin. Reverend Horseshoe was an old-fashioned man in most respects, and his preaching was no different. Whereas most men in his line of work liked to open their revivals with holographics and pyrotechnics, Horseshoe did it the old-fashioned way. That is to say, he yelled his ass off.

“Who among you could dare say where God is not, on this world or any other? I say his spirit is everywhere, and I have yet to see evidence that this is not the truth! I even carry the notion that His love and His grace is more here than anywhere else in the cosmos!”

Not that the Reverend didn’t make use of current theatrical technology to its utmost: the larger-than-life holographic crucified Jesus with the laser-beam eyes was a personal favorite of his. The laser-beams had been the brainchild of Rojhaz, the ground manager. But despite Rojhaz’s urgings, Horseshoe never started his show with such things. Even the robot gospel choir stayed silent while Horseshoe was opening.

“Now, I know some of my colleagues say I do not preach enough fire! That I do you poor folk a disservice by not bellowing about how you are damned souls who need to change your sinful ways! But I know better than that! I am here as a representative—no! Not a representative, but a servant! A servant of the Lord! And as a servant I come not as a judge! But as a beacon!”

Anastasia was proud of the robot choir. She had added a pre- and post-show dialogue loop, allowing the chubby androids to convincingly chew the fat as the audience filed in and out of the tent. It added a verisimilitude that she felt that were lacking in all the other garish ideas Rojhaz had cooked up. It was show business, she understood that. But Anastasia felt that they owed their audience a little more.

“A beacon of the Lord! Of His love! Of His grace! And, most importantly, of His hope! I am a beacon of hope!”

At that cue, Anastasia flipped the switch, and the electro-luminescent material of the Reverend Horseshoe’s containment suit glowed with a brilliance that rivaled the sun. Indeed, it even rivaled the laser beams that came from Jesus’s eyes.

“What’s the crowd look like, Rojhaz?” Anastaia said into her earpiece. The robot choir had just started; she didn’t have another cue for a few minutes. “How long have they got?”

“They seem pretty into it, I’ll bet they’ll stay in the tent the whole three hours,” came the slightly muffled response.

“No, I mean, how long do they have?”

There was a strange noise as Rohjaz suddenly became very aware of his own containment suit and adjusted it. “Weeks. If that. The plague’s hit this town pretty hard.” His voice lightened. “They’re engaged though, even the blind ones. We’ll get a powerful haul out of this one. Most of their livestock’s already succumbed, so we’re talking heirloom pieces, furniture. Definitely stuff we can get real dosh for.”

“You think it ever bothers Horseshoe, fleecing these people before they’re about to die?”

“Girl, do you even listen to what the Reverend says? He’s giving these people hope. They’ll get a fair more use out of that than great-grandma’s silver these next few weeks.” Behind his voice, Anastasia could hear the robot choir finishing out the opening number. “Besides, how much would you pay for hope?”

Anastasia couldn’t answer. She just sat there, high in orbit, as the robot choir reached their crescendo.

“Amazing grace,” they sang. “How sweet, the sound…”

The dream: Jennie Smith woke up in a desert, standing in the center of an endless, cracked sheet of dirt so hard you could scrape your knees on it if you fell down. Above her, the sky was even blacker than her grandmother’s skin, and the moon seemed like a hole carved into its clay.

Several feet away, an ibis scratched at the soil with long and skinny legs, forcing its narrow beak into the grooves where the surface had split while drying. The ibis stopped, sensing her presence.

“What are you doing here?” it asked.

The ibis didn’t speak English. It was a different language, something Jennie Smith had never heard before, but the syllables still rang with meaning. “This is my dream,” she told the ibis. Her mouth couldn’t form the bird’s strange sounds, so she spoke in the language she used at school.

The ibis cackled, stamped at the broken ground. “Filthy,” it spat. The long beak again disappeared into a crack.

“What are YOU doing here?” Jennie asked.

“Fishing.”

When Jennie woke up the next morning she tried to hold onto the dream, tried to file the strange sounds away beside their English counterparts. She showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast with her mother and father and grandmother and grandfather and aunts and uncles and everyone else on their floor of the Center for Indigenous Transition.

“I had a strange dream last night,” she said, and began relating the events. At first, only her mother was listening, but gradually the others fell silent and before long, the length of the table was filled with closed mouths and wide eyes watching the girl’s gestures. “It asked me what I was doing here,” Jennie said. “But it didn’t say that, it didn’t say what are you doing here, instead, it said…” she closed her eyes and concentrated, testing the unfamiliar movements in the space where her tongue met the roof of her mouth. They felt foreign but fluid, and when she gave voice to them she was surprised by the ease with which they fell from her lips.

No one said anything, for several seconds. Her parents exchanged meaningful looks, her aunts and uncles exchanged meaningful looks, and get grandparents exchanged meaningful looks. After the silence in the room became nearly unbearable, it was broken by the sharp snap of Jennie’s grandmother’s palm against her cheek. “Ow!” Jennie yelled.

“Don’t you ever use that language again,” she said furiously.

“It was just a dream!” Jennie argued as she pressed her hand against the warm skin of her face.

“It’s a dead language,” the old woman continued with slightly less force. “It’s filthy. Don’t you ever let anyone hear you use that language again.”

Jennie put down her fork and stared at her plate, still rubbing her cheek with her other hand. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“We use English now,” her grandmother said, then returned to her seat. Jennie watched the table, full of dark faces with darker eyes silently focusing on fingers, napkins, plates, anything but Jennie and her Grandmother. The old woman picked up her fork and scraped up the final remnants of her egg. “We use English,” she repeated. “Only English.”

I’m floating. Well, it seems like I’m more submerged at the moment. It takes me a moment to realize where I am and that still doesn’t make sense. Everything is dark, my body feels weightless but it is not peaceful. My lungs begin to realize; I’m not breathing. Suddenly, it’s panic. Arms start flailing; my mouth shuts hard and contains what oxygen I have left for some reason unknown to me.

This is when I’m looking around, blurs of the moments through corporeal space of matter filtering into my mind; the moments that may be my last. I stop to realize it for what it is; my last moments. No, I tell myself unable to accept what it might be for reality. The key is not to panic. My eyes start focusing as best as they can and I start pulling up the metaphorical anchor that’s tugging me down further.

Up, the only way out is up. My arms stop flailing and they start acting methodical. I’m swimming, I believe. Pulling myself from floating, I can see the edges of my vision blurring in darkness and my head begins to spin inside. Thinking of what I have to live for, it has to keep me going after all. Mother, Father, and my future come to mind. Particularly the future I’ve squandered, the future I refused to act on. Never applied to those colleges, never went to Australia, and never got to see what I thought I was destined to be witness to. I am getting older and I haven’t yet made a move forward. How old was I now and my dreams were still the same distance away from me?

The focus was keeping me awake enough to push myself through the liquid. I can see something just beyond the surface. I can’t die like this! It can’t end this way! It’s getting darker, but I can see light. It’s getting much darker, but I know with that last strain of strength that I can break the surface.

“Welcome to re-life, Abe.” The next thing I can hear is the doctor saying this to me. My eyes are focusing again and I’m hardly panting for air now. The off-white allure of an office, the sterile scent of medicine, it’s all coming to me very slowly. My parents are here, smiling proudly. They have tears in their eyes; tears of worry. What just happened? What accident was I in?

“You passed the test; you get to go home now.” I’m confused. I don’t understand and I’m looking towards my mother and father for guidance. This isn’t real, is it? What is real anymore? The doctor is handing me a plastic card. Sitting up, I start to read it.

Abe Carter
Certified to Live
Issue Date: 10/25/2050

It was then that I realized, life will be better from here on out.

The snow falls on my smile like that old fairy tale—you know, the one about the dwarves and the cannibal queen, the one with the apple. The tableau would be better if it was sunset, because I always liked sunsets best, but you take what you can get.

I’m drinking in the buildings, the river, the empty streets where cabbies used to curse at pedestrians who never bothered to listen. I’m eating the silence that comes with snow. Everything is filling up white, though there’s a grey cast to the new blanket, not like the picture books I used to read about Christmas when I was a kid.

I know they will have missed me by now, but no one will come back. The overseers won’t let them. It’s too dangerous now. I can’t feel it, though—my body’s still strong, still perfectly capable of walking and talking and breathing in the last of my home. They’ll say I was crazy, I’m sure, but I love this city, this state. I’d go crazy for real if I had to leave it all behind. I never got how people could live underground. It’s the air, I think, that would get me. I can’t live without the wind on my face.

The snow is thick now, and I think I can feel a little of the numbness setting in. That’s the way they said it would be: slow but painless. I did the research. I knew what I was getting into. My body feels stiff and I can’t quite tell if the snow is cold when I pick it up with my bare hands. It’s so beautiful. I know what it means, but all I can think is that it’s beautiful.

I throw my handful in the air and let it fall down with the rest, laughing out loud as it brushes my fading skin. In all my life, it has never snowed like this in New York.

“I don’t want to come home.”

Reggie’s wife began to cry, tears sliding around her cheeks.

Reggie smiled beatifically. “Don’t cry Carol, its alright, really. You’re young and awfully perky. You’ll find another husband in no time.”

“But I’m in love with you!”

Looking at her open red mouth and the slobber on her lip, Reggie wondered how this had ever been enough for him. “Please try to understand, I’m very happy here. I don’t want to go back to earth. I don’t ever want to leave my Asas side, the only reason I did now was because she demanded that I commune with you.”

“Commune? She?” Carol’s hands trembled. “Do you fuck it?”

Reggie’s mouth twisted with revulsion. “What? No! That’s disgusting!” He folded his hands on his lap, his narrow face turning intense and cruel. “I say “she” because Asas is the female of her species, you sick hag, a life giver. What she does is nothing so banal as fucking. I myself have not had a sexual urge in weeks, well, not till now but I blame that on the fact that you’ve made me upset.”

Carol wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Oh Reggie, what have they done to you?”

Reggie shook his head. “These creatures are transcendent, utterly fascinating. Socially, they are far more advanced than we are. Not knowing one, you can’t comprehend. You know one and you don’t want to leave.”

Carols face went blank. “They’ve taken your mind.”

Reggie sighed, rolling his eyes. “No, that’s not it at all. Listen, I’ve only contacted you because Asas asked me to, she is concerned because of all of the messages I’ve been getting from you and the government. I haven’t had a lot of time to read them because Asas and I have been very busy, but those I have read have been very disturbing. Asas asked me to contact you because she is worried that if I don’t humans will send more people and those people would just fall in love and want to stay. Asas doesn’t think that it’s good for us, as a race, to be so infatuated and frankly, I agree. Of course, she’s going to keep me.” He sighed. “We have a very special relationship. They aren’t a cruel species Carol, they really are thinking of our best interests.” He paused and the blissful expression on his face changed for a moment. “Its possible that if they sent humans that weren’t receptive to social signals, autistics perhaps…no, it shouldn’t be risked.”

“Reggie, I miss you. Your mother is so worried, she asked me to-”

Reggie interrupted her, waving his hand. “This is all very unpleasant. Asas feeding time begins soon and I don’t want to miss it. It’s so beautiful, I can’t even describe. Don’t send any more messages, okay?” He stood and grinned at the screen. “Good luck finding a new husband babe.” Reggie pointed his finger at the screen like a cocked blaster and then the transmission cut.

Carol began to cry again, reaching toward the static of the dead screen. Light years away, Reggie ran joyfully to find Asas, the unpleasantness of the encounter with his wife fading quickly in the euphoria of new love.

Jack Strap didn’t bother burying the men. Buzzards’ gotta eat, he thought. Same as worms. A man makes his own funeral. You wander in the Desert, you’ll go the same way all Desert creatures do. In the belly of something else.

Buzzards weren’t gonna do a thing with the corpse’s shooting irons, so Jack took that scavenging upon himself. Turned out not to be worth the effort; damn pieces might as well be wood for the good they’d be. Cursing, Jack tossed them aside. No wonder he’d plugged them so easily. You couldn’t hit a broadside with those things, corroded as they were.

These men were amateurs. Wouldn’t have lasted long, not out here, not if they didn’t know how to protect their weapons. If they hadn’t caught up with him so quickly, the Desert would have chewed them up the same way. The Desert was eating away at him, too, Jack knew that. He was not a young man, and what skill he’d once had was now little more than luck. If it wasn’t men like these, out for the price on his head, it would be a night when the campfire that kept the spiders at bay would blow out. Or he wouldn’t treat a cut properly, and would collapse, his blood turning to powder. Or the caustic sand would get into his eyes, and he wouldn’t be a predator anymore, just prey. Or it would be one of a million other deaths the Desert had in wait, and his bones would bleach and crumble same way these fellas’ would.

That which is built on sand is destined to fall, the saying goes.

Jack wasted no time going through their pockets, tossing out the paper money that was already crumbling and pocketing the coins. But it was the bigger of the two that had what he was really after: a satellite link-up. No bounty hunter traveled without them now, not in the Desert. A GPS signal was your best hope of getting out once you were in, and even that was no guarantee. There it was, in a inside pocket, its plastic protective case already being eaten away. The small red LED on top slowly pulsing, signaling the connection was solid. Jack opened it and thumbed an orbital view. It had been months since the Desert had gotten to the last one he took. He was comforted by the little lights that represented the cities. What was left of the cities.

It had been a long time since he had seen an orbital view, but even Jack could tell there were fewer lights.

Jack Strap placed the link-up in the pouch on his belt where the old one used to stay, and was surprised at how much space was left. “Things keep getting smaller,” he said, to no one in particular, and left his would-be arrestors to the belly of the Desert.

Sometimes I pretend I have a metawomb inside me.

Things would grow there. Children, I mean. Dozens at a time. Girls and boys. I might not be able to stop. I’d populate my entire livingspace with pudgy pinkfaced versions of myself, and when I went to the recreation floor, strangers would come up and ask me how I managed to adopt so many. How strange, they’d remark. Some of them even look like you.

I’d never tell anyone. I’d just smile and watch those tumbly bright-eyed beings chase eachother from wall to wall.

At night, when I can’t sleep, I press my hand to the soft space above my hips and think of my body filled with pink goo and hundreds of tiny, tiny people, growing like unspoken words.

“It’s a family business.” The shopkeeper trembled, his telltale American face-lights blinking. “My daughter and my wife make the simulations themselves. Very good, high resolution, but they don’t do any touching, they’re good girls, they don’t touch.

“He didn’t want the Sims, did he?” said the thin man, running his fingers over the crystal display, inside which two women winked at him suggestively. The tiny store was filled with animated images of the same two women wearing different costumes and teasing the viewer with repeating loops from their Sims.

The shopkeeper put his palms against the sides of the simulation pods and blinked, drops catching in his eyelashes. “He made them do it real-time here. They were laughing and moaning and then he left and took the feeling with him. My daughter won’t leave her room and my wife is so ashamed she can’t speak. Neither of them have the heart to produce the Sims over the Network. Sims are the family business and without them working, we will be taken to the Steam camps by our creditors.”

“Psychics are brutes.” The thin man shoved his hands into his thick wool coat, oblivious to the Martian heat.

“Beasts.” said the shopkeeper.

The thin man winced and his brow wrinkled. “He’s coming here now, isn’t he?”

“Compadre, please, I need your help. He is coming here to rape my wife and daughter. Altec said that you could help, that when the zift was on the road you were the man to call.”

“You didn’t tell me he was coming here now. You knew, and you didn’t tell me.” The thin man shivered and pulled his coat tighter. “I don’t help liars.”

‘Papa?” A small voice drifted from upstairs. Little feet padded down the narrow broken staircase and a tiny woman came into view. She held herself against the wall and looked at the thin man as she spoke. “Are you okay Papa?”

“Yes baby. Papa is fine. This man is the one I told you about, he is going to help us.” The shopkeeper looked up, his face lights oscillating on the grey cheek of the thin man.

“Fuck you, yes. I’ll deal with him.” The thin man pulled out an illegal cigarette and lit it. “Psychics are brutes, but we take care of our own.”

Marcus wiped blood from his chin. The thick red fluid stuck to his fingers. He stood slowly, pushing himself up off the ground with all the dignity he could muster as his foe stood proud and arrogant. Marcus’ feet were pressed into the soft Mars soil as he readied himself again.

“You fool!” Marcus screamed out across the yards between him and his adversary. “You do not comprehend how much more precious is my life than yours! I am Mars-born!”

Gaither kept his eyes on his quarry and turned his attention inward for a moment. Focus the rage. Do this professionally. It’s a high-profile case; lots of media attention. Don’t give them any reason to cry brutality. His fist ached from cracking into the Red Planet monster’s jaw. He shook it off and pushed the pain back down, eyes boiling with a deluvian hatred that conquered all other emotion. He knew that if he didn’t kill him today, Marcus would go on living for another four hundred years. All of the Mars-born did- at least the ones who could escape Marcus’ knife. This time, however, Gaither had to stop him. Ninety-seven murders, eighteen rapes, and so many robberies that NASA police were still piecing it all together; Marcus had outdone every other criminal in extra-Earth territory. It stopped here.

The fiend spat blood, shaking off the solid hit that jarred his jaw. His broad shoulders rose and his bleeding lips sneered at the NASA marshal. “You high-radiation types are all the same. What? You think you got time? Ha! A pathetic 75 years at best you filthy Earth-born. C’mon… you’re dealing with a deity here. Just walk away, boy.”

Gaither left his pistol in its holster, watching Marcus weigh his escape options across a skyline of yellow Mars soil. He had heard enough. “Under NASA law of the Solar System Peace Treaty Agreement, you are hereby ordered to surrender You will receive a fair trial.” The wind was blew holes in his words, but Gaither knew Marcus got the idea.

“Simpleton!” Marcus squealed. “You die today, Earth-born!” He charged the officer, but Gaither was ready. Dodging the first fist, he took a second in the ribs before he grabbed Marcus’ wrist and sent his own head cracking into the criminal’s fleshy face. The blood was thicker than Earth-blood; it had to be. The nose broken, and the man disoriented, Gaither snapped the cuffs on his left wrist.

”No,” Marcus frothed as he spoke. “I won’t be defeated by a weak-muscled Earth-boy! I live forever!” He wouldn’t shut up, so Gaither exercised his militaristic rights: he expertly administered a slam of his fist into the yet undamaged side of Marcus’ jaw, precisely as per the diagram in the Academy’s text books.

“Under NASA law, you are under arrest.” For the first time in days, Gaither smiled. “Point of interest: I’m from Pluto, asshole… I’m the one that’s immortal.”

Purby Stolafson took a deep breath and regarded the man and woman across his desk. He recognized the woman—with her luxurious blond hair, hourglass figure and delicate features, she was unmistakably one of his. He still didn’t know what to make of the man, other than he wanted him out of his office.

“I’m sorry,” Purby said, reshuffling the papers on his desk. “What was the problem with her?”

“Her breathing. She breathes. She doesn’t stop.”

“Yes, and?”

“It’s unnerving.”

“Most of our customers appreciate the breathing.”

“I don’t.”

Purby sagged a bit in his chair. He knew where this was going. “Is that all? Just the breathing?”

“No! It’s not just the breathing! It’s everything! I can feel her pulse. I can hear her stomach gurgling. She eats! It’s disgusting!”

Purby sighed. He looked at the woman, at her blank, forward stare. “So, if I’m understanding you correctly, your problem with the X-3—you are an X-3, right?” She nodded. “Your problem with the X-3 model is that she’s too life-like.”

“Exactly! If I want a woman, I can go get one.”

“I’m sure you can, sir.”

“And they’re a fair sight cheaper than this squishy monstrosity you’ve saddled me with. Don’t you have anything in chrome?”

“We don’t do chrome, sir.”

“Exposed piston-joints, then. Blinking lights. An atomic power source. Gimme something! For God’s sake, man, you’re supposed to be building robots! Is it too much to ask for them to look like it?” The man was on the verge of leaping out of the chair. Purby, by contrast, was sinking deeper into his.

“You’re not the first person to come to us with this complaint,” Purby said, removing a small brown business card and a voucher from his desk drawer. “This is an antiques dealer down in Old Town. He’s got a machinist on staff. I’m sure they have something that meets your needs. And tell the girl out front to give you a full X-3 refund.”

The man’s attitude instantly reversed. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Stolafson! I do appreciate it!” Fortunately, the man wasted no time leaving Purby’s office.

Purby relaxed and turned his attention to the woman. Her expression had not changed. “Well, what do you make of all this?”

“To be honest,” the woman said. “I’m quite relieved.”

It made Kara nervous that the wall of her quarters breathed, waves of slow expansion and deflation. Cloth was the only thing between her and the harsh explosive cold of space. Kara knew that the blended weave, was a hundred time stronger than steel, lighter, and cheaper too. Without this material, the station wouldn’t be even a quarter as large. During launch, the space station was a slim, silver arrow, the people tied down inside, and after, the sides flew off and the station inflated like a balloon, blowing out in a rush of electricity and air, forming rooms and creating warm, safe space. Still, Kara couldn’t shake the feeling that a moment of madness and knife would kill them all. They said it wasn’t possible, but weightless in a station orbiting Earth, everything seemed possible.

Lean more than muscular, Kara she was dwarfed by the massive female marines who piloted the water ships and who bullied their way about the station like giant rolling boulders. Kara was used to being small, nearest to the ground, to having taller kids look down on her, but these women in weightlessness, seemed to surround her, feet below hers, head above, shoulders off to her side. She felt like a mouse in a cat’s mouth, dangling by her tail, limbs swinging. Men watched her eyes lingering, repressed urges flaming in the periphery of her vision. In the orphanage, she maintained a head of long hair, past her shoulder blades. She had cut off her hair for the trip, in the hope that it would make her look boyish, but it only succeeded in making her look like a pixie, and exposed the back of her neck to burning stares.

When she went to the medic for her weekly checkup, the female marine looked at her with hard eyes, jamming shots into her arm, making her eyes well up with tears. The doctor sneered and shook her large head.

“You think you are so beautiful. You think you can have anyone you want, you little bitch, but if you touch one of my men, or let him touch you, I will cut your wrists and tell everyone that it was suicide.”

Kara held her shoulder, a drops of blood floating from the wound. She felt nauseous and blinked her eyes to keep from crying. “I don’t-”

The doctor waved her hand and took out another syringe. “Don’t talk, you shut your fuck mouth. You make a shit and I shove this next one in your eye.”

Kara found herself unofficially banned from all recreation, isolated in quarters no bigger than a closet, silent as space. She looked down at the crowded earth through the plastic window, the cities lit in the dark, bright outlines tracing human habitation, so numerous in the black, everyone and everything connected by trillions of wireless connections, communications, signals, lights. She closed her eyes, and in the dark behind her lids, she was truly alone.

First it was the blacks. That one was easy, like a warm-up. They’re a cinch to pick out after all. Then it was the commies. They were harder, but with such catchy slogans, who could pass it up? Then came the terrorists. That one must have been fun. I mean, when you think about it, who isn’t a terrorist? But that one blew over too. Then came the gays, but we all expected that. I mean, really, they were asking for it. I didn’t care one way or the other, but I knew they had it coming.

Then there was a while when they didn’t go after anybody. That was our finest hour. It took two thousand years, but finally everyone believed that the fisherman was right: we really could live in peace. For us, it was Heaven. For them, it was Hell. Peace was bad for business.

Now it’s the preachers. Not the way it used to be, when one set of preachers went after another—priests, lamas, rabbis, gurus, whatever—but in the new way, where anyone who admits to a higher power is punished. We were asking for it, too, I guess. It’s ironic, but then, irony has always been God’s purview in my mind.

Now we meet in basements, back alleys, fields, or barns in the middle of nowhere to muffle the noise. All the symbols are lit up inside with Christmas lights from before Christmas was forbidden. It’s a celebration paying homage to something greater than ourselves, something that flows inside of us and can’t be stopped. I watch from the edge of the room, sitting cross-legged on an old crate and feeling straw poke through my habit. The dance is a circle of laughter, warm and fluid, more beautiful than any sermon I have ever heard or given. No one argues over whether they get to dance with the cross, the star, or the moon; they’re just glad to have something to show that they care. We don’t bother to call Him by names anymore.

Tsaro was the image, Tsaro was the shadow. During the hour-long commute into Osaka no less than seventeen people asked for his autograph, and when he transferred to a cab at the end of the line he could feel empty eyes squinting at him, searching for their reflections. An elderly lady congratulated him on his success right before Tsaro opened the door to the studio.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. Tsaro was uncomfortable when people talked to him as the artist.

Inside the studio, Tsaro sat in front of the glowing mirror while a slender, apron-clad woman fidgeted over his face and hair. It didn’t matter; he’d be airbrushed out of recognition. They still needed a person as the shadow because a computer-generated image couldn’t make live performances, but Tsaro had seen the wireframe of his face flicker across monitors in the maintenance chamber. One day, his face would be bars of light creating the illusion of three dimensions. One day, he wouldn’t even be a shadow.

The woman nudged Tsaro out of the makeup chair and he shuffled slowly down the long hallway to the maintenance chamber. When the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss, the head technician glanced up from his control panel and smiled out of habit. Tsaro smiled back with the same polite vacancy as the halogen over the bluescreen gradually flickered to a solid white.

“Ready?” the technician asked. Tsaro nodded. Around him, the eyes of seven other programmers lifted to judge his appearance, and a few nodded their approval. On the wall opposite the bluescreen, a large LCD display spooled the miles of code that made up the artist. Tsaro was not ready. Tsaro was never ready. He took his place behind the prop microphone and squinted until his eyes grew adjusted to the brightness.

The technicians had turned their attention back to the monitor, but Tsaro could feel the unseen eyes of millions of mislead fans. He closed his own to force them away, but they watched from the blackness behind his lids.

The first sound was thick with manufactured bass and the air in the room reverberated with a disembodied, re-embodied heartbeat. Beneath it, Tsaro could hear a symphony of keystrokes but he knew that none of the technicians were creating the sound. The sound belonged to the artist. In the maintenance chamber, everything belonged to the artist.

In the space between pristine code and his imperfect body, Tsaro did not open his eyes. His skin felt unusually heavy as he waited for the next chord to sweep across the room, and under the silence between the beats, Tsaro dreamed of the panels of light that would one day build a hollower, more perfect version of himself.

Don’t believe that bullshit they told you in orientation, kid. It’s always an easy sell. This is a new economy we’re dealing with. Trust the product. You trust the product, it’s an easy sell.

You ever been to Lagos, kid? In Lagos, there’s these big bastards, carry around hyenas like pets. I shit you not. Fucking hyenas. I was dealing with Samson, who was head of a tribe of Hyena Men there. Brother had Lagos in the palm of his hand, but it wasn’t enough. Couldn’t have been, or I wouldn’t have been there, you know what I mean?

So we’re at the restaurant–swank place, very swank–and here’s this man-mountain, Samson, and he’s got this gigantic mongrel right there at the table. It’s the size of a Saint Bernard because of all the growth hormones Samson pumped into it, and it’s right there at table, giggling and drooling, in a place that wouldn’t let in a Welsh corgi.

I start off smooth—always start off smooth. “Let me ask you a question, Samson. Are the Hyena Men respected? Or are they feared?”

You’ll notice I went off the script, got to the point. You should stick to the script. Later, when you know it, then you can pull whatever you want out of your ass that’ll get you sales. Until then, stick to the script.

So Samson likes that I got right to the point and smiles like only an eight-foot tall bastard who regularly reams an entire city up the ass can. “You tell me,” he says. “You tell me, do you respect or fear me?”

“Honestly?” I said right then. “Neither.”

And then, BAM! That goddamn 300 pound beast is all up on me, like out of nowhere! Now, the Hyena Men train their mongrels to go for the jugular, and I could feel the fucker’s teeth scraping up against my neck. Naturally, everyone in the restaurant pretends not to notice. And Samson, Samson cannot wait to gloat over this.

“What now, my friend? Do you feel fear, or respect?” Goddamn smug bastard.

I’m not going to press my luck too far, not with that beast on my neck. So I say, “I’m afraid of this furry fucker, I won’t lie to you. But the funny thing about fear, Samson, is that it can disappear pretty quickly.” And then I disintegrate the goddamn hyena. Now who has the respect?

This is why I love the fact that the demo models they give us now have that one live shot. I mean, you had no idea how hard it was to demonstrate proper destruction with a handful of blanks. You probably noticed how tiny the demo model is. Makes it good for dramatic situations. You know, after you’ve learned the script.

Samson’s now aware of the destructive power of the X-J23, and he’s this close to ordering a gross of ray guns for all his other little Hyena Men, but he’s balking.

So I mention the bigger models. That lights up his eyes, tout suite. But not quite enough. So I mention Mantari, the head of a tribe of Hyena Men up in Cape Town, and how he had wanted the larger models, had his eyes on ‘em. So I give him The Line. The Line always works. You should stick to the script, but let me tell you, The Line always works.

“Mantari wanted some, but he couldn’t pay. Not properly. Some people just aren’t prepared for the new economy.”

Samson grins real big, talks about how he is prepared, and buys damn near the entire catalogue with fucking gold bars. A week later, I don’t even have to say shit, Mantari in Cape Town does the same.

Easy sell, kid. They’re all easy sells, long as you trust the product.

“This place is a dump,” Headley muttered, for what must have been the thousandth time. Foxworth rolled her eyes.

“Of course it’s a dump. It’s our job. If it wasn’t a dump, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Headley replied, “But look at this place. I mean, really look at it. One guy can’t make buildings rot like that, even if he is a zapper.”

Foxworth’s eyes took in the crumbling foundations, the sagging walls, the rust, the dirt, the mess. Her hand drifted to the triple-cycling proton gun in her side holster. It was there for her protection, but how could she protect herself against time?

“Well, this is a class 15 if I ever saw one. Definitely uninhabitable. No clue where anybody could be hiding in all this mess, though. Even zappers gotta eat.”

Foxworth nodded her silent agreement. Sometimes a mutant like this would turn tail and run off after it had killed so many people, attacked by some parody of conscience. They’d have to file a pink form, and while Foxworth hated that, it was better than sticking around this dump any longer.

“All right,” she said at last, turning towards Headley. “Let’s pack up and get out of—”

“What are you doing here?”

Both partners turned towards the new voice, wide-eyed. Foxworth’s hand went immediately to her gun, though she noticed that Headley’s did not. He frowned instead, kneeling down to speak to the boy, no more than seven or eight, who faced them solemnly from the rubble.

“We’re here to help,” Headley assured him. “Are you hurt? Did you lose your parents?”

A cat meowed and Foxworth jumped back, her hand clenching around her gun before she registered the source of the noise. The animal drifted out from behind the pile of debris, making it only the second living thing they’d seen today, and rubbed against the boy’s legs. He picked it up, still frowning at the two government workers.

“You shouldn’t be here. Go away.”

“We just want to make sure you’re okay,” Headley told the boy in that maddeningly reasonable tone, the one that adults used on children and men used on women when they were feeling particularly superior.

“Go away,” the boy repeated, holding the cat close to his chest.

“Look, kid, you’re gonna have to come with us.” Hadley was frowning now. He didn’t like being contradicted or disobeyed.

“I said go away!” The child’s face contorted at the same instant that the cat hissed, flattening its ears back against the top of its head. The veins in Headley’s forehead exploded like overripe grapes, spattering blood everywhere, just like the rest of the corpses they’d seen in this wreckage. He barely had time for a yell of pain before he collapsed, lifeless.

Foxworth was frozen solid. She knew she should be drawing her gun, yelling, crying, running away, doing anything but standing dumbly in the rubble, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

“Come on, Bugaboo.” The child held out his arms and the cat, after a last look at Foxworth, ambled back and jumped into them. The child frowned at her. “Go away,” he repeated. “Don’t ever come back here again.” Then he turned away.

The cat’s green eyes were mesmerizing, and Foxworth caught her breath. For one irrational moment she thought she could get lost in those eyes, like a labyrinth, and never come out.

Foolishly, my people thought the alien ships were asteroids on a collision course. We launched our most deadly weapons into the sky, which exploded harmlessly off the liquid hull of the invaders, raining poison onto our world. Dust flakes on my head as I walked to the sacred ground.

During the ceremony, my younger siblings held me underwater in the pool of our temple, that blue chalice just big enough to immerse my adolescent body. I was arrogant in my new development, confident that I was ready to become an adult. Then, as I let out the last of my held breath, I began to panic; nothing had happened, no painful change, no sudden epiphany, no realization of adulthood, I wasn’t ready, I was going to drown.

There, in the water, hands pressing down on my head my head and flailing limbs, I met death for the first time. I was a frightened child, drinking and choking on water, weakened, desperate, ashamed, tearing and helpless. Hope lost, I stopped, just stopped, and let myself die, lay still, peaceful under the web of my brothers’ hands. It was then I felt the closed slits in my side softly open and I became the water, not breathing with my mouth but with my body, my whole self suffused. I looked up through the shining pool to my siblings, and they were crying, dropping tears of worry and hope into the water, and each droplet spread on the surface, a rippling miracle.

Two days later, the little insectoid robots came, crawled into my home and sawed through the flesh of my family. My uncle, who slept at the doorway, was already dead when I woke up, his vocal cords severed. My father, though, screamed and thrashed, filling his bed with blood as my mother tried to tear the silver bugs off his skin, her fingers severed by their tiny metal blades.

In the pool, gazing up through the water, the faces of my siblings became like stars against the open sky, and in that moment I believed in everything. I lay there, in wonder, my body water, my eyes the open night.

Four days later the stink of blood and dust had us all covering our heads with wet scarves, debris slashing our eyes, the water toxic, the air polluted. Our schools were piles of rubble, mass graves for dead children. My mother held her surviving children in the remains of her bleeding fingers and told us that our lives were coming to an end. We fled, like ants on a hill, scurrying from our homes and schools, but nowhere was safe, and nowhere we could go was better than where they were.

Later, we were blamed for our resistance. If we had just waited, listened calmly while strange shaped ships plummeted from the sky spewing garbled language of conquest. If we had just laid down in the streets, if we had never picked up anything that could have been interpreted to the invaders as a weapon, then the metal bugs would not have crawled into them and tore them apart from the inside. If my people had not built such strange schools, they would not have been mistaken for military barracks, if we had not fought wars amidst ourselves, we would not need to be ruled.

Since the day my siblings lifted me out of the pool, I have never again felt trust so complete. Do not ask again, why I go armed to speak to you. Do not tell me that my people should surrender. Do not accuse me of being irrational till all your own family lay dead, and till your culture is beaten, erased, and chained.

Do not question me, for I know death well, and I will send him to you.

The yard sale was one of those haphazard affairs, full of the kind of junk that no one in their right mind would actually take, damaged or torn or merely out of the realms of taste altogether. This is a powerful camouflage for the good stuff, and any experienced bargain hunter will tell you that the larger a morass of hand-me-downs and chipped Formica, the better a prize underneath.

I once found an a James Deakin and Sons egg timer amongst some horribly tarnished flatware; it clocked in at three minutes and forty five seconds, which says something about how long it took to boil an egg in 1903. Another such garage sale earned me a Railroad-approved BW Rageon pocket watch, which only took a bit of polish to look the same way it did in 1927. So when I unearthed the device from under a seriously disturbing collection of polyester sweaters, I knew it was something to treasure. I just didn’t know what.

“It’s a time machine.” A portly fellow in dark socks and sandals noticed me handling the thing, careful not to nudge the knobs. “It requires six ‘D’ batteries.”

“Pull the other one,” I said. It didn’t look like a time machine, but it didn’t look like anything else, either.

“No, seriously. It’s a time machine. I built it. Used it, even.”

“Oh? What’s the future like?”

The man laughed and regarded me like a retarded child. “You can’t go into the future! It hasn’t happened yet! Just the past. But you can go in the past all you want.”

“Hold up. You can go in the past with this? Change what’s happened? Isn’t that, I dunno, dangerous? Kill a butterfly, change the world, that sort of thing?”

The man huffed. “Nonsense. The universe is not so poorly designed. If you go back in time with the intention of changing things, one of two things is going to happen. One, you’ll be totally ineffectual, and people won’t notice you or heed you, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference whether you were there or not.”

“What’s the other?”

The man’s eyes and voice suddenly went cold. “People do notice you. And you end up being the cause of the very thing you were trying to prevent. You end up destroying the one you meant to save.” He was quiet, and reached out to touch the device in my hand, but thought better of it. “I’ve failed too many times. It doesn’t make any difference. This cost me thousands of dollars and years of my life, but I’ll give it to you for five bucks if you if you just take it away and never bring it back.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He looked up at me, his face flushed. He motioned blindly to his yard, strewn with trivial remnants from a life, someone’s life, priced at a bargain. “I’m selling everything else that reminds me of her. They never belonged to me, anyway. I shouldn’t keep what isn’t mine. The universe won’t let me. Five dollars on that there time machine, my final offer.”

I took it, as well as 1951 “Cort” model Seth Thomas with an alarm that still worked. On the drive home, I thought about the man’s words when I asked him one more time whether or not you could use his machine to change events.

“The present is unavoidable,” he said. “It’s best not to think about it.”