365 tomorrows

“I’m sorry, but the answer is no,” Captain Diana Cai watched Ambassador Karr on her viewscreen as his face darkened. The Ambassador bit his tongue inside his mouth until he tasted blood. Captain Cai allowed him his moment. It was harsh news she had to deliver. “Our team has found traces of the Contagion in your soil.”

Ambassador Karr regarded the Captains teardrop stomach, covered only by a sheer cloth that allowed him to see the erotic and powerful exposure of her fertility. “Captain Cai, our cleaning efforts have been intense. Our scientists have found no active traces of the Contagion, and those minor elements still left are broken down. We are assured that, with proper precautions, the children would have a very low risk of infection.”

Captain Cai put her hand on her pregnant stomach, indicating she wished him to be silent. The Ambassador held his breath.

“Ambassador, our highest priority is the welfare of the children. We cannot deliver life to a world where there is any possibility of contamination. I have no doubt that your people deserve the children. I was guided on a virtual tour of the school that you built for the twelve we hoped to give you and I was very impressed by the design, all that light. . .”

Captain Cai looked around her command center, where sixteen women were operating the ship at various stations, all of them at different stages of their pregnancy. Seven years ago, the Bar’ak had spread the Contagion to every human world, rendering nearly everyone sterile. The only fertile humans were those members of the Fleet on space missions. After the infection the Fleet was split, the men sent to retaliate against the Bar’ak aggression, and the women charged with the task of repopulation. The situation was worse than the government let on. “Our children can only be released to colonies with enough security to keep them safe. Contamination levels are part of that security.”

The Ambassador ran a hand through his silver hair. “Captain, my people will double their efforts to clean our soil. We will have the remnants of the contagion removed in a matter of months.”

“Ambassador, I regret to inform you that we will not be returning for thirty seven years.”

“Thirty seven years?” The Ambassadors calm face had broken, and angry wrinkles, like a thousand scars, descended on his face. “Captain, that is outrageous, most of us are already aged past our prime. A delay of that long could kill our colony!”

The Captain put a hand on her stomach and the Ambassador gulped.

“Ambassador, I remind you that it is treason to raise your voice to a woman with child.”

The Ambassador knelt, the screen following him as he crossed his hands over his chest and closed his eyes. “Captain, Mother, forgive me, Life Giver, I pray to you. Please, spare us, give us one child, just one, to teach and love and hold. Please mother, mercy on us. The child you give us will be our most beloved creature, its feet will never touch soil. Please mother, I beg you.”

“I’ll do it.” Said a young Ensign, newly pregnant with her third child. “I’ll go.”

Captain Cai switched off the screen. “Adia, you are out of line.” The Ensign put a hand on her stomach.

“It is treason to raise your voice to a woman with child.”

Captain Cai put her forehead in her hands. “You read the reports, the soil is dangerous.”

“Yes. I read that in some parts of the planet, the soil has minor contamination. Captain, you saw the Ambassador. We cannot leave this colony to die.”

“Are you ready to be a symbol for the rest of your life? An object?”

“No, I’m not.” Adia walked out from behind her console. “Mother, I can’t do this any longer. I cannot continue to give birth and give my children away. I’ll go mad. I have the right to leave the program.”

“Actually, Ensign, you do not have that right. Humanity is in a dire situation right now. There are planets of worlds that cannot reproduce on their own. Even if you, and your children manage to avoid infection, even if you do that, the Bar’ak may find out you are there and return to this moon and spread the contagion again. Then we will have lost yet another fertile woman.”

“If you don’t leave me there, you may lose an entire colony! Mother, please. I want to go. Please, give me to them. Give them hope.”

“I can’t. I cannot let you go for anything less than an act of treason.”

“Then let me be a traitor.” Adia, cradled her mothers face in her hands. “I love you mother.” She lightly slapped the Captains cheek.

Captain Cai swallowed. “To strike a fertile woman is an act of treason, the punishment for which is death. Ensign Cai, because you are fertile, you will be spared capital punishment and will serve your lifelong sentence in the care of this colony planet.” Captain Cai nodded to two female guards. “Take her to transport.”

“Captain, mother, I promise you, I will give them hope.”

“No Adia, you will give them everything.”

Sergeant Ariel Odipo held back a grimace as her squadron approached the Sepch encampment. She doubted they could see her face through the mirrored visor of her helmet, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She loosened her grip on her rifle as well. The tension was thick enough as it was. This was a peacekeeping mission, after all.

Besides, these people weren’t the problem. Odipo had grown fond of their crabby little faces and way they waved their eyestalks when she approached. They were not her problem.

“Perimeter clear, sir.” The crackle of Odipo’s earpiece contrasted with Private Moharasundaram’s constantly even voice. M was already Odipo’s favorites out of the new privates; she could take the head off a target at 2000 meters. Not that she would get a chance here.

On Odipo’s orders, the rest of the company filed in with the loaded skimmers. The food and medical supplies they were bringing didn’t look or smell like anything Odipo would put in her body, but that was other cultures for you. Odipo had gained the respect for Sepch culture that can only come from spending every day defending yourself from them.

She found herself gripping her weapon tighter again. Odipo loosened up immediately, hoping none of her company saw a tense C.O. But M saw. M saw everything.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Granted.”

“When the insurgency comes, why don’t we just take them out?”

“You are aware of the Rules of Engagement in this situation, Private.”

“Yes, sir. But I still believe that–”

“What did you learn in basic, soldier?”

“Sir! To put big holes in tiny people, sir!”

“You should have also learned to follow the R.O.E. This is a peacekeeping mission, Private. We do not fire unless we are fired upon. Is that clear? Follow your training.”

“I was not trained for peacekeeping, sir.”

None of us were, Odipo thought. But she did not say it. Instead she turned her attention to a group of larger Sepch forcing their way to the front of the crowd. They carried the armbands of the Kree-Gnaugk-Kluf, but Odipo didn’t need that to tell her they were bad news. Their rough behavior to the other Sepch and their greedy possession of all game off the skimmer made their position abundantly clear. Odipo could see her soldiers closest to the gang, and saw them slowly start to raise their weapons.

“All units, hold fire,” Odipo said. “Repeat, do not fire unless fired upon.”

Odipo and her squadron watched as the gang–the insurgency, make no mistake–made off with most of the supplies, leaving little for the civilians to pick through in their wake. They would take the supplies to the cliffs that perched above this valley, and once they had achieved sufficient cover, they would fire their weapons down on the enemy forces who were dumb enough to give them food.

Sergeant Ariel Odipo watched her enemy walk away, and tried very hard not to think about the number of men she would lose once they reached those cliffs. She was suddenly very much aware of how tightly she was gripping her rifle.

The writers of 365 Tomorrows are honored to announce that we have been invited to be guests at PhilCon 2005. PhilCon will be held on December 9th to 11th, at the Marriot Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. Jared Axelrod, J, Loseth , B. York and I will be hosting two panels, ‘Publishing for an Online Audience’ and ‘Flash Fiction’.

To all those who attend our panels, or who spot us in the hallways, we will be giving out a free CD of 15 recorded stories from 365 Tomorrows, along with exclusive work that will not be on the 365 Tomorrows Podcast, which we plan to launch in December.

If you want the CD but won’t be attending PhilCon, we will eventually sell the CD on the website and in the bookstore, Bindlestiff Books, which has just opened in West Philadelphia.

PhilCon is a fantastic convention, lots of great panels, a large dealer and art room, and, most importantly, a fantastic group of people who run the convention. We look forward to meeting you there!

“Goodman Ernest, your application for life expectancy has been denied.”

Ernest, as his own legal representation, was standing at the podium before the masked council. When he heard their pronouncement, he nearly fell off the stand.

“Council! I beg appeal!”

The head councilwoman banged her gavel; the advantage of psychic links between the council was immediate judgment. “Appeal granted. State your case.”

“I have lived three hundred years. I have taught our children, I have been a lawyer, a pimp and a priest, I have redesigned a product and I conducted an orchestra. Council, I have lifetimes full of accomplishments.”

A Councilman at the end of the long table shook his masked face, and the head Councilwoman closed her eyes, receiving opinions through her psychic neural implants. When she finally spoke, her eyes remained shut. “Indeed you do Goodman Ernest. We have reviewed your accomplishments and found them suitable for two lifetimes, but not three. Reviewing the facts, we have noticed that in the last 50 years you have lived off of the proceeds on the wise investments from your bestselling audio feed. You have failed to contribute anything further to society and are living off the fruits of past labors.”

Goodman Ernest put both hands over his heart, the gesture for mercy. “I appeal for a retroactive sabbatical.”

“Denied. Retroactive sabbaticals are only applicable to those who can demonstrate significant emotional or physical injury, besides which, no sabbaticals over ten years are ever granted, and you would need to be granted a sabbatical of over seventy three years.”

“Council. I am capable of contributing society again.”

“As stated by our constitution, when a person slows its pace through our world, it is time for them to move aside and allow the innovations of those younger beings to take their space. The ripe fruit must give way to the seed.” The council’s language was always flowery, a result of the impassioned arguments flowing between them.

“I appeal to your sense of mercy. I am capable of giving, of innovating. I can reinvent myself again. Grant me the years to prove that I can give a lifetime to our people.”

There was a moment of silence and the head Councilwoman finally opened her eyes. “In reflection of your reluctance to depart this mortal coil, we shall grant you a period of five years in which to make your contribution.”

“Five years!” Goodman Ernest felt faint. Five years was a blink, you could barely make a plan for change in five years. “You expect me to give a lifetime in five years?”

“Think of our ancestors, and what they gave to us in their short lives. Imagine them, and show yourself worthy of their legacy. Go, and make your mark.”

I don’t remember being a citizen, but when I was growing up, it was all my father ever talked about. ‘Back in the valley,’ he would say, and point to the acrylic mural that took up most of the wall by the front door. It looked nothing like a valley. It was a jumble of angles and curves, oddly pixellated like most of my mother’s art. I don’t remember much of my mother either, but there are bits and pieces of her all over the apartment, plotted out in meticulous detail on nearly every flat surface.

Of course, my father wanted me to go into something with computers. He still does. “Dennou,” he says, when I meet him for coffee, “when are you going to give up that mess and buy yourself a datafeed?”

“I have a datafeed, dad.”

Actually, I have six. Only one has been turned on, and I use it as a lamp in the hallway. Across from me, my father began listing the merits of computer operation, chuckling and gesturing like he was describing a woman he wanted to set me up with. I smiled and nodded a few times, but we both knew nothing would come of it.

It’s not that I don’t know how to use a computer. I grew up around them, after all. I used to type eighty words per minute, but I haven’t tried in months. My father has never been away from a datafeed for longer than a day, except for the horrible, horrible night he spent in an airport after his wallet was stolen. I still hear that story, sometimes. You’d think he was kidnapped by terrorists.

Normal parents encourage their kids to get married, settle down, spit out a couple kids; my dad just wants me to hack. I haven’t decided if I’m lucky. We meet at the teahouse every Tuesday, and he rants about my career choice for a bit before giving me the manila envelope of stolen blueprints and security codes. Then I pay, or he pays, and we part.

Today, I pick up the tab. Money’s been good this week. He asks me if I need any cash, as usual, and I tell him no, as usual. I don’t know where he gets his money, since he seems oddly isolated from the crime circles of the island. I had to describe the runner code using networking references, and I still don’t think he gets why, because I’ve agreed to work with my partner, I couldn’t stop working even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. I suppose, in the valley, they didn’t have honor among thieves.

“So you’ll think about it?”

“I’ll think about it,” I lie.

“You’re getting old to be playing Robin Hood,” he warns, his tone shifting to the serious. This is a deviation from the script, and I adjust my posture to hide the usual slump.

“I’ve got it under control.”

“Ah, you can’t control age, Dennou.” He’s called me that since I was six, when, on a sadistic whim, he convinced me that I was a robot.

Outside of the teahouse, I pull a cigarette from my pack and shield my lighter from the fierce January wind. “I downloaded the patch for that,” I joke, and he fakes a grimace.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“I don’t need your money, Dad.” I open my bookbag against the wall and slide the envelope between two notebooks of securifeed schematics while I held the cigarette in my teeth. “Do you want money for the files?”

“From my own son? Never. I give you those to keep you alive.” He grins, but he knows it’s true.

“Same time next week,” I say as I sling the bag over my shoulder.

“Take care of yourself, Dennou,” he warns. I make a face before turning my attention to the sidewalk.

This is it, lads. We’ve done it. The future of dating is now.

Forget all those phony hookup services, the holodates, the matchmakers. We’ve discovered what your problem was all along. You don’t need to find the right girl, mate. Not anymore. That’s a thing of the past. You need to find the right you.

It’s taken decades of surveys and analyses and precision research, but we have finally figured out that mystical ideal: what girls like. Brace yourselves, gents. This one’s a doozy.

Girls like assholes.

I know you’ve heard this one before, and it didn’t work, did it mate? Well, that’s because you didn’t understand it the right way. Sure, we all know nice guys finish last, but assholes tend to get left in the end, too—unless they’re just the right kind of assholes.

Now, I won’t deceive you blokes. This ain’t easy. You can’t be an all-out fucker and expect a girl to like you. There is a certain type, a certain formula: the thing all women secretly want. They want just enough asshole to keep their lives exciting, to make ‘em think they’ve got work to do, but not enough douchebag to bugger off with some other chick in a shorter skirt.

Being an asshole takes care and talent. You need just enough cruelty to make ‘em hurt, and just enough kindness to make ‘em simper at you afterwards. You need to play the game, boys. It’s all in the game.

So how do you do it? Ay, there’s the rub. Let me tell it to you straight: if you don’t already know it on your own, you’re never gonna. It’s just that simple. What you need, my friends, is some way to know when enough is enough and when it’s not. What you need is this little miracle.

See it? Barely visible to the naked eye, but with more computing power than your entire cubicle. This little guy takes information directly from your brainwaves and figures out just how you should react. It’s like having that proverbial angel on your shoulder—or devil, boys, take your pick—to tell you just what to do. Doesn’t even need surgery.

You’ll have just the right formula, just the right mix: enough asshole to make a girl feel needed and enough humanity to convince her she’s done her job. And if you’ve got the unfortunate habit of being a nice guy at heart? All the better. You can go back to your goody-two-shoes ways once the prize is won. All you have to do is take the miracle bug out of your ear and hide it away. It’s that simple.

But you’ve got to start somewhere, gents. You’ve got to start somewhere. Now, I know the trick. I can show you the way.

But it’s gonna cost you.

Autumn was ending the day the man who carried no name wandered into the village of Plum Rose. Nearly bent double by the pack upon his back, the stranger nevertheless moved with a fluidity and grace that immediately drew attention in the dusty township. Children watched from hidden places and whispered, “Ronin” to each other, and if the same thought crossed the minds of the adults, they held their tongues.

Indeed, it was not until the man unloaded his burden that the adults allowed themselves to speak the word their children used without reservation.

The first thing the man removed from his bundle was this: a small box of lacquered wood and paper that his deft hands unfolded into a waist-high table. Also brought out was a second box, larger that the first, and made of metal. It proudly displayed a funnel once unfolded, as well as a revolving bottom and a hand-crank that needed to be attached separately. A third box was carefully manipulated by the man’s rough hands, and once unfolded it also required nozzles and pipes to be screwed in. Though the burlap sack the man had carried upon his back was still filled to bursting, he did not pull any other wonder out of it. Instead, he merely displayed it’s contents to townsfolk who had gathered.

Within the dusty burlap, in their pristine, pale green glory, laid a prize worth more than gold, more than silver. For when the man who carried no name had come to the town known as Plum Rose, he brought with him coffee beans.

He called for fire, and it was brought to him. He called for water, and this element too was collected and laid in front of him. The village of Plum Rose was not a wealthy one, a villager could find himself enjoying and perhaps even preferring the synthetic meat and beer that made up his diet. But coffee was more than the stacked molecules that made it, and as such, synthetic coffee was tolerated, but never enjoyed. Only the Magistrate enjoyed coffee, his imported beans and personal barista bought with the broken backs of the villagers.

This much was told to the man who carried no name, and more, as the boiler he had unfolded reached it’s full heat and potentency and the roaster turned the green beans that tumbled down its funnel black and aromatic. Cup after cup was poured for the villagers, and so fragrant was this ronin barista’s brew that the smell even wafted to the nose of the Magistrate.

Perhaps the man who carried no name knew of this, perhaps he had counted on it. Only such could explain the slow smile that crawled across his visage as the corpulent Magistrate and his similarly begirthed barista plowed down the street toward him.

“There are worlds,” the ronin said. “Worlds far out in the edge of the sky, whose distance from the Earth curses them. They receive no beans from the home world, so distant are they, so far, and their lives are that much darker. Every night I write a prayer for them, and burn it with my best beans in the hope that the aroma will reach them.”

“You dishonor me, sir,” the barista said, after being forcibly prodded by the Magistrate. “Tell me your name so I may know who would have the disrespect to brew about my proximity without so much as ‘a by your leave?’ I do not wish to battle you, sir. But I feel my honor demands it.”

“Would that your honor was as demanding as your belly,” the ronin said. “Then perhaps I would have not needed to provide these poor souls with my paltry beans’ embrace. All barista are taught from birth that coffee is a drink of the people, yet you would bar the door and toss them the molded grounds! My name, like respect for you, it is not something I can carry. My pack is weighty enough. But battle I can provide in abundance.”

And so then, on the dirty streets of Plum Rose, did two masters do battle. Their ritual, their art taking all of their focus. The village found itself drowning in the swift hand motions of the two men, engaging in rites that had remained unscathed by the progress of time. And when it was over, every body held its breath as each man tasted the brew-work of the other.

The Magistrate’s barista drank deep. Upon tasting the dark, sharp beauty the ronin had provided him, he hung his head. The ronin bowed to his fellow barista and thanked him for the exquisite coffee. The Magistrate’s barista bowed lower, thanked the ronin, and proclaimed him the winner.

The Magistrate was enraged. He charged at the barista, drawing forth his pistol of flame and thunder. He never received his chance to fire it. The barista laid him flat with an expertly-aimed demitasse spoon right between the eyes.

“You have already disgraced your ancestors. Do not disgrace your progeny as well,” the ronin said, kicking the Magistrate’s pistol across the dust. “Any worth you might have claimed though this man is gone. You are now merely a man with more money than sense, and those are as the sand on the beach. These people owe you nothing. ”

That evening and well into the night, the coffee flowed freely to the townspeople, who engaged in revelry unlike the town of Plum Rose had ever seen. Such revelry was this that no one noticed the man who carried no name fold up his table, roaster and brew station. No one noticed him leave, the sunset turning his silhouette as dark and rich as the drink he gave.

But his presence in Plum Rose is not forgotten. Even now, carved deep into the wood underneath the sign that proclaims the village’s name, is written this:

Before the ronin came
Did we ever know the world
Or its bitter kiss?

“We’ve got a jumper.” Pratt was one of those orderly, wiry men who pleased supervisors without ever accomplishing much of value. Detective Harr lit his cigarette and enjoyed the growing scowl on Pratts face. Cigarettes were quite illegal in hospitals, but no one questioned a damned thing anyone in his department did.

“Suspected jumper.” Detective Harr pointed toward the one way mirror where a little girl was playing on the floor.“How did she get picked up?”

“Child abuse. She dropped some pretty heavy hints to school officals, teachers, aids and the like, but no one took direct action until she marched right into the Principals office and started demanding police intervention”

“This is unusual behavior?”

Pratt raised an eyebrow. “Abused children don’t usually march right up to their principals and demand that their fathers be arrested.”

Harr shrugged. “A feisty child then.”

“Yeah, a feisty child who poisioned her fathers cereal before school. They had to pump his stomach, he nearly died. We didn’t suspect it was her till the police went to pick him up and found him at the hospital.”

“We’re sure there was abuse?” Pratt handed him a file.

“Read the medical reports yourself. There was tearing of the vaginal wall, and –“ Decetive Harr waved his hand, cutting Pratt off.

“I can read it.” He stuffed the report in his briefcase and stared though the one way mirror where Jenny was playing under the supervision of a nurse. She knelt on the floor studying the bottom of a toy truck. Jenny put the truck on the carpet and began rolling it around, all the time looking at the nurse and smiling.

The nurse fussed a bit when Detective Harr told her to leave, but flashing his badge and smile earned him some alone time with Jenny. He sat on the couch where the nurse had been sitting, the broad bright smiles of the playroom mural made him feel lewd and out of place.

“Hi Jen. Do you know who I am?” She didn’t look at him, just continued to roll her truck around on the carpet.

“Are you a doctor?”

Harr chuckled “No Jen, I’m a police officer.”

Jenny looked up at him though her soft bangs. “My name is Jenny.”

He leaned over towards her and smiled, big and fake. “Jenny is a little girl name, isn’t it?” Jenny rolled the fire engine around on the floor.

“Did you ever hear the story about the fairy and the housewife?” asked Detective Harr.

Jenny kept her eyes on the engine. “Nope.”

“Well, it goes like this. Once upon a time there was a housewife who had a beautiful new baby. Her baby was so pretty that the fairies wanted it, so in the dead of night, they snatched the baby from it’s cradle. Of course, they couldn’t just take the baby and leave nothing in it’s place, so they left an mischevious spirit that made himself look like a the housewifes beautiful baby. When the housewife picked up her child in the morning, she knew that something was wrong, so she picked up the spirit and smashed its head with a cold iron frying pan until the fairy promised to bring back her baby safe and sound.”

Jenny paused and her chubby hands pulled at the carpet. “That doesn’t sound very nice.” she said.

“It’s not. Tricking people isn’t nice.”

Jenny stood up and lifted her arms in the air. “Do you like my dress? Green is my favorite color.”

“Can we cut the crap Jen?” Jenny lowered her arms.

“What?”

“I mean it. Cut the crap. You’re a jumper. You are accused of the transposition of consciousness onto an earlier time period.” Harr laid her open file on the ground and Jenny glanced at the papers, clenching her little chubby hands.

“You know what he did, the sickness he gave me. You know I will be on treatments for the rest of my life.”

“Jen, the punishment for transposition is removal. Your consciousness will be dispersed.” He tried to keep his voice from cracking. Jenny knelt next to her records and picked out an x-ray of her pelvis.

“What about this body, you’ll let this body rot without a consciousness?”

“There is a little girl in there-”

“We are fully integrated!”

“There are methods. Sometimes we can pick little bits of person out.”

“That’s medieval.”

“Why did you transport yourself back after the first abuse? You must have known you would catch it from him, you knew about the illness.”

“My husband.” said the little girl, her soft voice chiming. “Three days ago, my husband went to the fair with his big brother. It’s his happiest childhood memory. He deserves that day.” Her cheeks flushed red and tiny adult tears ran over her smooth face.

Detective Harr wanted to reach out to her, the instinct to comfort a tiny child rising in his ribs. After a while he stood and took her hand, leading her out the door and down the bifurcated timeline.

They wait for him. They deny it, but they do. They sit with their alcohol and they wait for the man called Ironwine to walk in and regale them with tales of his latest adventures. Ironwine, who they say hears the buzz and modulation of the galaxy. Ironwine, who they say feels the stars and crackle and is aware of the turn of every planet he lands on. Ironwine, the man for whom the universe waits for.

For when he arrives, he makes it worth the wait.

”Naoki Anzai had bioluminescent tears embedded into the flesh of her cheek and down her neck. ‘One for every year Rajeev’s away,’ she said. ‘One for every year he’s away.’ I could see the light from the glowing trail peek out of her collar and bleed through her blouse.”

“A year isn’t that long on Kesh, is it?”

“Are you telling this story? Because if you’re telling it, I’ll shut up and let you tell it. I can wait.”

“No, no, continue, Ironwine. We’re all anxious to hear.”

”Very well. Naoki said she had asked for my help because she heard I got things done—I heard that snort—that I got things done. She gave me a holographic image of Rajeev, and asked me to find him. She said that my legend spoke of amazing deeds and grand adventures, and that she knew I could do it.”

“You sure she had the right man?”

“Indeed, you may say that. I thought she had the wrong my own self. But I smiled politely and suggested she not put so much faith in legends.”

“Waste a’time. Bloke’s prolly dead.”

“I brought that up, but Naoki shook her head, and showed me the slowly blinking light on the inside of her right wrist: Rajeev’s pulse.

“On Kesh, the trail was brief. I managed to cheat better than a couple of slave traders at game of brocco, and won the last hand right when my own freedom—and, more importantly, my wardrobe!–was in the pot. The slave traders, naked and shivering the harsh Kesh rain, were so polite about where to look next that I gave them back their clothes.”

“Why would you keep their clothes?”

“Spite, mainly. They were going to keep mine.

“As you gentlemen know, Rimjar is not so much a world as it is a way station for people who liked to be kept under the radar. Obviously, my usual subtly is wasted there. I found myself in a bar near Rimjar’s tiny equator, engaged in what started as an innocent dance but escalated into all-out mayhem.”

“Pretty standard for Rimjar.”

“Too true, my friend. Though this is only the fifth bar fight I’ve been in where the establishment was leveled in the process. But it was in the bar’s remains, drinking the last of the Tarkellian whiskey from broken glasses, that the proprietor let slip that he had seen Rajeev sold.”

“Where?”

“Gumgigobella!”

“No!”

“Yes! And on Gumgigobella, I was forced to duel the magistrate’s daughter in order to gain entrance to the Sacred Library of Trade Dealings! I’ll have you know, she had a wicked left hook and knew her way around a trident, and I would be lying if I said the way she whipped around the net with her third arm wasn’t monumentally attractive. I could tell in her eyes that she felt similar about my fancy footwork. I almost stayed. I almost did, until I felt the holograph generator in my pocket. I was able to persuade the magistrate’s daughter to grant me admission to the Library, even though I had let her win the duel. She was voracious, and with good reason; Gumgigobellian females tend to eat their mates. I have teeth marks to prove it.

“It was on Xiuxiraboheres that I was captured and interrogated by the Galactic Inquisition, and their viscous tentacles oozed over my skin and mind.”

“Pffft! Now you pulling my leg. No one escapes the Galactic Inquisition.”

“So it is said, so it is said. However, while the Inquisition had searched me thoroughly, they did not check every orifice, and I had more than one gadget available to me as a means of escape. The Inquisition’s tools proved more effective on the Inquisitors than they had ever been on the inquistitees, and I was able to discern exactly where Rajeev was. On Alkalinella.”

“On Alkalinella?”

”I was surprised too. Luckily, on Alkalinella, it was just a matter of haggling. I was reluctant to give all three shriftgeg seeds for Rajeev, but his current owners would not let him go for any less. The journey back was uneventful.”

“Then what happened?”

”I returned Rajeev to Naoki in the tiny hovel on Kesh where she had first asked for my help, of course. They embraced awkwardly and passionately, engaging in motions and sounds they probably wouldn’t have if the separation of years hadn’t bereft them of their inhibitions. Forgotten, I left them entwined and ambled back to my ship.”

And they buy him another round of drinks and ask to hear it again and he tells it again, and few more times after that. The details omitted and details remembered, but the story ends the same way. He does not speak of what happened after he left the lovers.

For the man called Ironwine, who hears the buzz and modulation of the galaxy, who feels the stars and crackle and is aware of the turn of every planet he lands on, the man for whom the universe waits for, sat alone in his ship and wanted very much to be someone else being embraced in dirty hovel on tiny planet. It is not an uncommon feeling.

But he knows he has to wait.

The robot was white, angular, and roughly waist-high. At least, it was waist-high for Jack, but Jack had always been a tall man thanks to the synthetic hormones he’d been given at a young age. It was a diminutive thing, like most personal assistants, and if one were terribly nearsighted and unfamiliar with modern robots, it might look like a human child. Jack was neither nearsighted nor unfamiliar with modern robots. The robot stood in the center of the cell, making a low whirring sound, while Jack sprawled on his bunk and read a yellow-paged scifi novel he’d picked up at the prison library.

For several minutes, the robot stood in relative silence, and Jack turned a couple more pages. It didn’t show much interest in cleaning. It didn’t show much interest in doing anything. It was a fairly ineffective device. Eventually, Jack placed the book beside his pillow and propped himself on his elbows to get a better look at the shape.

“What’s your deal?” he asked.

“I am a Class B personal assistant produced within the United States from United States material. My operating system is Windows 2060. My serial number is 376-2678,” the robot recited. “My uses include, but are not limited to, cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, walking dogs, and playing MP3s currently licensed by the RIAA.”

“Huh,” Jack said.

“Under the Right-to-Work Act, I am incompatible with products manufactured overseas or those manufactured from overseas parts.”

“So, are you going to clean, or what?”

“I have been incarcerated because of a conflict between the legal system and my programming.”

This was news. Jack had never heard of a robot in prison before.

“I will be decommissioned and my parts will be used to build other personal assistants. I am scheduled for decommissioning in seventeen minutes.”

“Did you roll over a cat or something?”

Before the robot could answer, the door opened with a musical bleeping and a gray-clad officer typed a code into an outside panel to lower the electrical containment field. “Okay, mechboy,” he said. “The family of the victim wants to hear your statement.”

The robot moved forward, its gears whirring and clunking towards the door.

“Wait, wait,” Jack said. “You killed a person?”

“His place of manufacture was incompatible with my programming,” the robot answered as it disappeared into the opening. The door beeped shut, and Jack was once again alone in the cell.