365 tomorrows

“New life!” came the call throughout “God’s Hammer,” from starboard to port, from aft to fore. It echoed through the corridors and ricocheted off the trophy skulls that decorated them. The men and women who crewed “God’s Hammer” sharpened their knives and painted their bodies in preparation.

“New life! Hoist the rag! Hoist the rag! New life!”

The ceremony was an auspicious one, for it was a member of the Captain’s harem who had given birth, and so then did this child bear the blue paint of “Captain’s Heir.” The Captain cradled the baby girl throughout the ceremony, surrounded by his favorite male and female concubines. Only when his joy became too great did he leave his throne on the bridge, and dance around the glowing engine core with the rest of the crew.

And if any of the crew were concerned with the existence of a new mouth and a new belly, they found their minds changed by the obvious joy in the Captain, brought on by his new heir.

All save one.

The first mate, whose purchase on the Captain’s throne was now lost due to this new heir, brandished his knife with a heavy fist and a bloody eye. He screamed with rage as he charged the Captain and his daughter, with intent to end them both.

And he clean would have, but for the eyes of the crew, who saw this. And but for the hands of the crew, who caught his arms and held him fast. And but for the hearts of the crew, each one of which still kept beat in the Captain’s palm.

The slave who was to be sacrificed was led by its neck back to the bowels of the ship, for the first mate was now lain upon the table in his stead. The chaplain, girded with the remnant of sacrifices past, called out to the gods, offering this old life so that a new life may prosper.

The heir was bathed in the blood of the first mate, which mixed with the blue paint to turn a royal purple. His body was deftly segmented by the chaplain, and each of the crew came toward the still-warm meat and sliced off a piece with their recently sharpened knives. Each piece was swallowed, and so then did crew become stronger.

The heir was wiped down, and the gore-encrusted rag was displayed proudly on the hull of the ship, proclaiming to all of the new life upon “God’s Hammer.”

And other ships did look upon the banner with awe and with envy. “New life,” they whispered. “New life.”

TURN THE SCOPE. Earth-124. Subject: Davis, Conner. Occupation: Car Salesman.

It was an ordinary day of waking up, drinking coffee, and making his way to the lot again but Conner was glad that every day had its predictability. New Fords meant New Mustangs with all their pretty little colors and displays, and he never ceased to enjoy selling them.

Conner was happily married, and enjoyed life with his son, Parker. He was a quiet man who lived a quiet life; a mediocre life that would leave him dead from heart disease at the age of 55.

Destiny: .01%

TURN THE SCOPE. Earth-273. Subject: Davis, Conner. Occupation: Assassin.

Gunshots were not his cup of tea, but ever since Conner had graduated from being an apprentice to actually doing the hits himself he hadn’t had much time for tea at all. This particular day, while he’s thinking about what it might be like to settle down with a wife while blood dripped from a gunshot wound to his side, he was on the brink of completing another mission.

Mr. Davis was an enigma in the eyes of all systems, and right now his one redeeming quality was shooting the fuck out of the newly-elected President of Unified Territories and the change that would ensue would be as important to him as the huge pay-off. Unfortunately, Conner would die of that wound before he could report his near-success.

Destiny: 9.05%

TURN THE SCOPE. Earth-5890. Subject: Davis, Conner. Occupation: Chemist.

Early days were no stranger to Doctor Conner Davis, who labored heavily over limitless lines of formula and code to decipher what the cure would be. Humanity was fading fast from the plague spreading through each and every citizen and time was running short for the underground lab he kept in Bismarck.

Dr. Davis had lost everything in his study for a cure including any hope of a relationship. He’d lost care of personal gain and took sight of what really mattered. Life mattered. His eyes saw the necessary means to create a cure and he might be able to save more than just his sanity by finding one soon. Doctor Conner Davis died of an aneurysm at 98.

Destiny: 45.39%

TURN THE SCOPE. Earth-1. Subject: Davis, Conner. Occupation: Unknown.

Conner Davis lived every day as if it were his last. He took everything as it came to him and never took any of it for granted. He never wrote a book, never saved a nation, never killed a villain or moved a mountain. Mr. Davis was going to Sydney and he was getting married to the love of his life.

Mr. Davis never knew happiness outside of how he felt for other people. Material possessions never occurred to Conner to mean anything. He lived, and he loved with the best of his ability and compromised nothing. Conner Davis dies tomorrow.

Destiny: 100%

TURN THE SCOPE.

“‘Wanted: Breast donors. 34 C or D cup, O negative or AB, Caucasian. Non-smokers preferred. $500 USD plus expenses. Absolutely NO BINDING.’ What the hell is this?” Ryan waved the classified ads in Race’s face. “Donors for plastic surgery? How much demand can there possibly be for that?”

Race shrugged and looked up from his copy of the Daily Times. Jobs were scarce and getting scarcer, which is why he and Ryan had hit upon the idea of going through the city papers in search of paid medical tests. “Enough that they’ve got an ad for it.”

“No, but I mean, seriously,” Ryan protested. “I can understand wanting blood or tissue donations for, I dunno, mangled faces or something, but breasts? How many people, like, lose their breasts in a car accident? Isn’t that sort of a weird thing to be reconstructing?”

Race snickered and looked back at his paper, combing the pages for something that didn’t actually require them to have diseases beforehand. “I doubt any of those ads are for accident victims.”

“You mean augmentation? But that’s illegal. How can they advertise something like that in the public paper? Won’t the doctors get arrested?” Ryan looked back and the ad and chuckled. “Though that does explain why they only want Caucasians.”

“Just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean they don’t do it. I bet half the tests we sign up for aren’t exactly legal either, but who’s going to stop them? We need money and rich people’s kids need a cure for cancer.”

“I guess,” Ryan agreed. He frowned at the ad for a few moments more before adding, “But $500? That’s it? What woman in her right mind would give up her breasts for only five hundred dollars?”

“Plus expenses,” Race reminded him without looking up.

“Expenses? Expenses for what? Never being able to get a date again? Christ.”

“For the medications and after-care, and the cosmetic surgery on their chests afterwards.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. No girl is going to cut off her breasts for five hundred dollars, no matter how much ‘after care’ there is.” Ryan snorted and turned the page.

“People who didn’t want them in the first place won’t mind losing them. Might even be a good opportunity.” Race’s voice was casual, a quiet musing as he frowned and reread one of the ads he’d circled as a possibility.

“Wait. You mean…” Ryan put the paper down completely, frowning at Race. “Trannies? That’s way more illegal than cosmetic surgery.” His face showed that he was more than a little uncomfortable at the idea.

“All the more reason for them to connect with rich women who want bigger boobs. The government isn’t going to break in and stop it; that’d be like enforcing prohibition. It’s a good way for everyone involved to get what they want while giving the law a good excuse to look the other way. How about lymphoma preventatives?” Race asked. “It’s long-term, so the pay’s good. You have a history on your mom’s side, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, sounds good,” Ryan answered, distracted. He was still frowning. “How do you know so much about this breast transplant shit?” he asked Race, squinting at his friend.

Race didn’t look up. He just smirked.

“How do you think I got rid of mine?”

The feeds are not for the news. The feeds are the distraction, the feeds are the facade. The news is contained within them, invisible to the naked eye, downloading itself as cookies, slipped into meta tags. Sometimes, Anna wondered who controlled the news, who encoded it so carefully before covertly disseminating it to a throbbing public that would never be able to read it.

“Six civilians reported dead after recent bombing,” the scrolling headline told her as she slapped a post-it above the monitor.

It is a crime to open up your computer. Computers come fully assembled: white cubes with no seams, glowing power button and white cord.

You had to buy a saw, the kind used for cutting pipes. It was a tedious process. When Anna was thirteen, it took her five hours to get through the half-inch of white plastic and the quarter-inch of metal beneath it.

She was disappointed at the interior, which consisted of shiny green boards pricked with bits of copper. It was too mundane to be forbidden, she thought. She resented the laws for tricking her into wasting her time.

The newsfarms were self-contained as well. The boy who lived down the street told her that the buildings were empty, operated by machines. Machines made the feedsites, and machines maintained them. That was why they had no doors.

“How do we know they’re telling the truth?” she asked, squinting at the windowless building.

“Machines can’t lie. They don’t even know what lies are.”

In the cafe, Anna inserted a small black cartridge and cut off the auditory alarm with a few keystrokes. The computer could recognize “malicious code.”

She glanced up to the innocent-looking post-it note attached to the top of the monitor. The usercamera was the first line of offense, and it was the first one to be neutralized. Now, it was busy converting the image of the yellow paper to digits, which were stored and immediately printed by the DHS for deployment. Their enemy is the color of dandilions, she thought, smirking at their waste of yellow ink. The front of the square said 10.12.01.

Judith had been a few years older than Anna, and lived in the apartment beside her. Judith’s apartment was sealed like a newsfarm, and, though there was a door, Anna had never seen it open. Eerie blue light flickered from the inch between wood and tile.

The first and last time she saw Judith was a week before she graduated from high school. Anna answered the door at three am, mostly because her mother told her not to answer the door at three am, and Judith shoved a box into Anna’s arms. “This is for you,” she whispered breathlessly before turning and running down the hallway in a mess of curly hair and toffee-colored skin. The police arrived three minutes later.

Confident that the computer’s safeguards had been bypassed, Anna opened the program on the disk and stared at the black window for a second before filling it with white letters and numbers. Another window opened, and the guts of the feedsite spilled out into black and white as numbers and letters. Anna hit print, then eject, then yanked the cord out of the wall and replugged it. Pocketing the disk, she looked at the startup screen. “Shit!” she said, loudly enough for the clerk to hear. He glanced up. “It turned itself off,” she explained.

“Do you need-” he started, then the phone rang, exactly on schedule. “One second,” he said, and picked up the receiver.

Anna grabbed the stack of seventeen freshly-printed pages and exited while his back was turned.

Sitting in the diner, drinking her fourth cup of coffee, Anna worked over the pages with a ballpoint pen. Eighty three people had died, not six. Their names were half-assembled as letters trapped in little blue circles of ink.

“You shouldn’t do puzzles in pen,” The waiter said, refilling her coffee. “What if you want to erase something?”

“I don’t like erasing things,” she responded without looking up. He walked back behind the counter and she circled another letter, frowning.

The girl with the tangled hair sat on the cliff face overlooking the ocean, and dangled her feet into the expanse. A ragged doll made of socks and cast-offs sat beside her. Every so often, the girl would adjust the doll’s slumping posture.

She saw the man’s strange ship land, but she didn’t recognize it anymore than she recognized him. So she stayed where she was, watching for signs from the sea. She didn’t even turn to look at him when he crouched next to her.

“Hello,” he said. “Whatcha doing?”

“I am waiting.” she said. She motioned to the doll. “And so is Petunia.”

“Waiting?” said the strange man. “I know a bit about that. What are you two waiting for?”

“Mommy and Daddy. They put me there,” she pointed to a steel hatchway embedded in the earth. Her eyes never left the water. “They told me not to come out until they came back for me, but Petunia got bored, so we came out. We go back in for peanut butter, but only sometimes. We used to have a house up here, but I don’t know where it went.”

“How long ago did they leave?”

The girl counted on her fingers, though kept her eyes straight ahead. “Four.”

“Days?”

“No,” she said. “The other one. Months”

“I don’t think they’re coming back,” the man said. “I’ve been all over this entire planet. You’re the first survivor I’ve found.”

The girl with the tangled hair turned away from the ocean to look at the strange man, confusion all over her face. “Of course they’re coming back,” she said. “Why would they leave me?”

When Goldie opened her eyes and saw the colorful fish swimming outside the curved window, she screamed, loud and high. The big Ohma waddled over and picked her up in its fuzzy, globular arms, hugging the little girl close to its warm soft body. Goldie shoved the Ohma away and wiped at her tears.

“Stupid Ohma.” She said “You’re not what I want.” Goldie went to the kitchen, where Ammee was spinning on its circular base. Green tentacles reached into the storage unit and on the high counter, making food for Goldie. When she came close Ammee started whistling a little tune.

“I’m hungry!” Goldie clutched her stomach and fell on the floor.“ You take too long. You’re killing me!”

Ammee uncurled a tentacle towards the little girl, offering her a peeled carrot.

“I hate carrots! How many times to I have to teach you!” Goldie kicked Ammees silver base, and it squealed. Goldie kicked Ammee again, and the base flipped over, food flying from the ends of the tentacles. Goldie giggled; Ammee had never been so funny. She kicked a tentacle, and it turned a dark blue. The Ammee twittered and Goldie kicked the base again, but it didn’t change colors there. Goldie opened one of the drawers and picked out a bunch of forks. Goldie scratched the tentacles till they turned blue. Some of them spilled out blue water on the floor. She giggled, watching the Ammee trying to right itself with all its tentacles deflated. Dumb Ammee.

With the Ammee on the floor Goldie could eat whatever she wanted. Goldie went into the cold box and picked out the ice chocolates and ate the whole box. The Ammee was still squeaking on the floor, spilling its blue water everywhere.

“Mom will punish you when she gets back.” Warned Ammee. “She’ll punish you for the mess.”

It seemed like she couldn’t tear up the silver shiny bits on Ammee, only the squishy tentacles. Ohma was all squish. Goldie wondered if Ohma was pink inside. Goldie picked up her forks and started to scream. Screaming and crying always got the Ohma out of her closet. The Ohma trundled over to Goldie and picked her up, humming a little tune. Goldie squealed with delight and stuck the forks in its soft fur. The Ohma made a weird low noise. It tumbled backward and Goldie bounced on its stomach, squealing. She kept sticking the forks in it till she ran out and then she went back to the kitchen. Her stomach hurt, and her throat felt like it had food stuck in it.

“Ammee, make me medicine.” she kicked Ammees tentacles, but it didn’t move. Goldie felt like somebody was sitting on her heart.

“Get up!” she pushed the base back onto the floor, but the wet tentacles kept pulling it over. Goldie tried to pile all the tentacles together, but the floor was wet and she slipped, falling on her bottom. Goldie cried. She screamed her loudest, but Ohma didn’t waddle through the door. Goldie crawled across the floor, her bottom and face wet, her tummy hurting, and found Ohma where she had left her, flat like a giant mattress. Goldie crawled on top on the Ohma and pulled a limp, furry arm over her like a blanket.

No one is sure where it came from. The old books with paper pages will tell you that it came from Cologne Cathedral, but I’m not so sure anymore. I imagine it comes out of the woodwork when trouble starts and times are dark. It’s time for the holidays again, but all we hear are the bombs of the war crashing down on our walls, shaking our souls and the ground beneath us.

The Archons of the city have gathered us children in the basements and the shelters as everyone awaits an end. They tell us stories and in each of these stories I listen for a crooked stick of candy.

Think back to the battle to defend Earth. In the chaos of the Narxar attacks, the holidays happened and the fighting stopped. The invaders didn’t have to put down their guns, but when they saw smiles and heard singing, they almost had a reverence about it. Somewhere in that story, a child was handed one of these curved confections and life was made better for it. Rumors have it that when peace was made with the Narxar, one of the canes was given as tribute.

Who could forget the civil war of the Mars colonies? A whole thirteen years filled with blood and sacrifice. The usually dry desert of the red planet was soaked with the blood of those who had given their lives for the right to make laws. It was then that the sky softened and revealed to them that man controlled nothing but himself. Snow broke the battle. It coated the red, if only for a day, and it cleared the minds of those who were riddled with anger. I like to imagine that someone handed someone else this length of peppermint and all was made right with the stars and the heavens.

In darker times, when we invaded Delfia II for its plentiful resources, for its air and plants and endless reserves of fuel, we expected to skip the holidays until we were victorious. Still, the Delfian climate was so warm and peaceful that when the time for celebration and goodwill came about, the soldiers lost their wills to fight. The war had become unimportant. Sometimes, I dream about a soldier holding up one of those perfect shiny red and whites and handing it to a Delfian child no older than myself. That child would know that everything would be all right.

Yet, here we are now. The ground trembles and my friends are huddled together as if our proximity could protect us from the bombs. Our Archons have left to defend us from the soldiers who would enter and kill us. I pray that no one wins. I pray that the sky opens up and that snowflakes fall down. I pray that somewhere, anywhere, someone will remember why we breathe, why we live, and why we created the word “peace.”

Then, the walls stop shaking. A deafening silence fills the air around me. My friend Sarah reaches over to me and takes my hand, pressing something into my palm. I look down and see a transmitter antennae, bent and shaped like a cane. Like a candy cane. Smiling, I take her hand and close my eyes. Somehow, everything is going to be alright.

Me? Oh, I’ve always known. I mean, not that I knew what it meant, but I’ve felt this way since I was a child. It wasn’t something that came out of nowhere, you know? But yes. When I went to high school, that was when I really had problems. I remember hiding in the girls’ bathroom and mewing for hours, just crying out because nobody could understand me—and I mean, how could they? I didn’t even understand myself back then.

I was an only child, you see? So there was no one to compare myself to. I didn’t realize that it was weird to sleep on the floor with the cats, or to feel more natural on all fours than on two legs. I didn’t understand these feelings inside of me. Kids in school used to make fun of me, so I tended to spend a lot of time on the Internet. That’s where I met other people like me. It was like stepping into a new world.

My parents… well, of course they don’t approve. They blamed themselves. I’m told most do. But you know, it’s not anything they could have prevented, right? I mean, this is what I’ve always felt inside of me. Even when I didn’t know what an anthro was, I had leanings. We all do.

The ears were first, yeah. It’s a good place to test and see how the genetic manipulation will work with the implants. The eyes were pure surgery, actually. We don’t even need feline DNA to mimic the slits. Later on I might get the gene manipulation to help with night vision, but it’s expensive, you know?

The tail is my next priority. It’s a big operation and it’ll take a lot of time to recover, but it’s something you can really feel. With that new nerve technology they’ve got now, I’ll actually be able to manipulate it, if I follow doctors’ orders after the surgery. I’ll need gene therapy on and off for the rest of my life, but just imagine the feeling.

Just imagine, for a second, that you’ve felt wrong your entire life—that your own body betrays you. Picture yourself as a pretty girl who has boys asking her out but cries herself to sleep every night because she can’t understand why she wants to lick herself clean. Pretend you’ve been told your entire life that what you are, what you feel, is wrong. Then imagine the freedom of finally being able to express yourself.

I know what I call that. I call it a miracle.

The picture made the cover of the Tzarin colony newsletter: a petite, blond-haired girl kneeling in the center of a flock of hibernating escravo, her arms wrapped around her skinny stomach and her face contorted by sobs. It was a powerful image, this preteen runaway surrounded by the sprawled and angular bodies of the plantation’s livestock, and it was made even more powerful by the subsequent photographs of her tearful reunion with her family. Adolescent psychologists were quick to speculate about the long-term effects of 18 months spent living with animals, but after a rocky readjustment period, Elena was deemed healthy enough to re-enter the colony’s schooling system.

“I thought they were dead,” she said in a televised interview. “I didn’t know about the photo…photo…(“synthesis,” her mother finished). All I knew was that it started to get dark, and everyone I lived with fell down.”

“Everything,” her psychologist prodded.

“Everything.”

Elena was no longer permitted to play in the fields with the escravo, but during a press conference, the governor presented her with an authentic Earth puppy that breathed and barked and did several other tricks that the mouthless, photosynthetic plantation beasts couldn’t compete with. After two nightfalls, the incident was completely forgotten.

At the height of the third sun-season, the Finnegan’s storage tank ignited.

It was an unfortunate but not uncommon setback. Glass-ceilinged working spaces were necessary to permit the escravo to live indoors, and in the hottest sun-cycle temperatures inside the storage tank often reached over 150 degrees. The financial loss was great but no one was hurt, and a veterinarian was called in to determine how many of the damaged livestock could be saved.

The plantation owners borrowed some beasts from their neighbors to haul the bodies, living and dead, into a nearby field so that they could be sorted. The veterinarian made his way slowly among the rows of blue-green bodies, dividing the responsive from the nonresponsive and the nonresponsive from the dead. He preferred working with the colony’s livestock; unlike Earth animals, the escravo had no mouths and were incapable of producing screams. In fact, science had speculated that the native Tzarin animals had more in common with vegetation than Terran creatures, so it was likely that they could feel nothing at all.

The veterinarian paused beside a young colt which rested in a crumpled heap, its front tendrils drawn up around its torso like arms and its eyelids firmly locked shut. The waxy skin across its back and stomach was badly damaged, blistering and peeling away to reveal the milky whiteness of dead photosynthetic cells. The animal’s eyes opened slowly when the veterinarian sprinkled water across its body to test the rate of absorption, but it made no other movement. Dire case. He labeled it unlikely and moved on.

Two thin, bony vines wrapped around his leg and he stopped.

The creature was motionless aside from the tendrils, which retained their vicelike grasp. The veterinarian unpeeled them but the animal grabbed again, and he reached into his medical back to get his scalpel. The vine quickly withdrew and dropped to the ground. The veterinarian watched the green shape scrape at the soil, and he had almost turned away before he read:

help.

The creature was treated at the university medical facility, which used high-powered solar lamps to feed sunlight into the undamaged cells. It continued to trace words onto the walls and floor: help, stop, hurt, bad. A press statement was released saying that an escravo had developed language ability, then, at the command of the council, another was released saying that it had been a prank. The council scientists took the escravo to a research facility once it had healed enough for transportation, and there, it was put through dozens of tests.

“It has a vocabulary of over 500 words,” the technician said, “but we’re certain that it must be parroting. The escravo brain doesn’t have the capacity for communication. No evidence of language, through text or gesture, has ever been observed in the wild.”

Elena, the escravo stroked into the wall.

“Parroting,” the technician repeated. “No further study is required.”

“What do you suggest be done with it?” the colony administrator asked.

“Well, our society was founded on efficiency. We can’t have people wasting time training their livestock to be circus animals.”

“So it should remain in captivity.”

“We have an underground holding chamber used to contain those awaiting trial,” the researcher suggested. “It’s not inhumane at all. Rather peaceful and secluded.”

“And dark,” the administrator pointed out.

“And dark.”

Starting January 1st, 2006 365 Tomorrows will be launching it’s Podcast; Voices of Tomorrow, which will feature some of the stories of 365 Tomorrows.

A Podcast is Internet Radio. It’s available for download whenever you want to get it, and, like an RSS feed, you can subscribe to a Podcast for automatic updates. Voices of Tomorrow will release at least one story every week (perhaps more, depending on time, inspiration and demand) for 52 weeks.

This is where you come in. I would like to know your favorite stories on 365 Tomorrows. Would you like to hear “The Nine Billion Names of God” spoken aloud, or do you have your heart set on hearing “Real Girls”? Do you have a list of J.Loseth stories you think need to be broadcast? Does the work of B. York speak to you? Do you think it needs to speak to others?

Let me know what you like, and what you want to hear. Drop a comment on our forums, e-mail me at jrblackwell@365tomorrows.com or, if you are reading this through the LJ feed, post a comment there.

I look forward to hearing from you.

-J.R.

Hongping watched a small child flounce across the glacier floor. The furry grey snowsuit the child was sealed into kept it from going faster than a clumsy amble, but it didn’t seem to mind. It was charging toward a huddle of summarily swaddled children. Waving its arms like that, the handless sleeves of the snowsuit made it look like some half-formed bird about to take flight.

Hongping smiled sadly deep within the voluminous black cloak that signified his adulthood. He had not been wearing it long, and was still unused to its weight. He had been so excited to cast off his fuzzy grey clothes and don the white and the black. Now he felt buried in the thick material.

When he had put on the cloak for the first time, Hongping’s father had handed him the sword of their family, saying that it was a symbol of the old days, and that it would protect his family. Hongping had believed that to be true, then. Now he saw the sword as little more than a heavy piece of ceremonial metal.

Watching the children play their huddle-game, Hongping wondered if his son would have charged so, or if he would have cautiously approached the huddle, like some of the other children. Hongping thought about pretending one of them was his boy-faces obscured by the snowsuits and goggles, the children all looked alike. But their laughs and cries were alien. None of them sounded like his boy, not one.

Just as well. Hongping remembered how distraught Alice had been, driven so mad by their shared loss that she pretended another’s baby was their own. She had been beaten by the other mothers; slapped raw by mittened hands. Hongping was scrounging in what was left of the city when it happened. He returned just in time to find her sprawled on the ice, her tears searing away the frost that clung to her bare face.

She told him not to leave. It was Alice who had been in the ruins when their son had gotten sick, and now it was forever a place of poison in her mind. The last time Hongping had seen her, she was walking away from the tribe, in a direction opposite of the city. She needed more distance, she had said, and begged Hongping to come with her.

Hongping stared at the children and their play, and felt the deep weight buried in the center of his chest intensify its ache. He found himself wondering whether he should have wandered off with Alice, whether it was better to bury this ache on the other side of the glacier instead of bearing it here within the warmth of the tribe. He wondered how long he would have to walk before the ice crystallized inside his lungs like it had his son’s.

He was staring straight at it, but it wasn’t until the large predatory bird screeched that Hongping realized it for what it was. He was horrified at its presence, but that fear was replaced by cold dread when he realized that he was not the bird’s target.

The children were.

Hongping wasted no time closing the distance between himself and winged terror, his black cloak billowing behind him. Hongping withdrew his sword without even realizing he was doing it, his body now a puppet of adrenaline and purpose. The bird had already gathered up three small bodies in its massive talons, and was reaching for a fourth when Hongping’s ancient steel dug deep into its thigh. The raptor’s screech echoed painfully off the ice. It dropped the children, choosing instead to bury those gargantuan talons into Hongping’s shoulder. As the bird’s jagged beak thrust itself toward its attacker’s face, Hongping summoned the last of his strength and shoved his sword up underneath the bird’s head.

The giant bird kept twitching long after the sword’s point burst through the crown of its head.

Hongping’s shoulder was attended to by Musette, who had recently lost her husband to water beyond the glacier. She removed his cloaks and undergarments, keeping him warm within the folds of her own black clothing. Their bodies close, Musette set to the art of healing Hongping wounds.

“You know,” she said. “You’d make a wonderful father.”

Herring rushed down the wet road toward the dock. Thirteen minutes till the grid went live. Thirteen, an unlucky number. Herring thought about knocking on one of the doors in the first class residential district, pretending to be a businessman trapped by his late hours. It would have worked before his counterfeit identification card had been confiscated. He paid good money for that thing and now it was a loss. No one would believe he was second class without identification.

This morning, the city had turned the season to winter, the big clock that dominated the North side displaying a snowflake for the seasonal shift. It was almost ten o’clock, curfew, and the temperature was dropping.

Nine minutes.

Herring ran past merchant quarter, and those dark windows, everyone already home well in time for curfew. The only people out now were the police, flying above the streets in their hover copters. Herring ran for a block and then stopped taking eight seconds to run back to the alleyway next to the Cookie Crumble store.

Seven minutes.

Herring remembered one winter night spent without protection, how before the morning he began to wish for unconsciousness, that he might slip under the water and just die. The memory of the cold and the wet made him shiver. At the bottom of the silver Cookie Crumble dumpster, under the oily boxes and burnt cookies there was a blackened tarp. The tarp smelled terrible, like ash and oil. Herring pulled it out of the dumpster and broke into a mad dash. The cold air flowed into his chest, cooling him from the inside with each deep breath. His face flushed, the wind smacking his cheeks, but he could not stop.

Three minutes.

The dock was in sight, He could see the little crowd gathered next to the only pier with a broken scanner, dark figures under glow lamp. They shuffled under the pier, slipping into the water. Herring balked. It was two minutes early! How could they go into that water a full two minutes early?

He felt the heat on the bottom of his shoes and cursed. His watch was wrong. Herring cursed the guy that sold him the thing, the shop it was replicated in and himself, for not double checking the time. He was running during the Hot Minute. The minute before the system went live, the city turned the heat up on the sidewalks. His shoes were melting, making sticky rubber marks on the faux wood boardwalk.

Thirty seconds.

His feet were boiling; he could feel his heels burning, his socks absorbing the melting rubber. The ground sparked, and Herring screamed, falling on one knee. Current ran up his leg and shook him violently. Herring forced himself up and forward. His mouth and eyes were frying; his bones were shaking inside of him. He screamed again. Nearly there. A few more steps. He leaped into the water, under the pier, the salt water burning his feet, bringing water to his eyes. He gasped for breath and stumbled, head slipping under the water. He found footing and forced himself up, splashing. The cold bit him viciously, and slammed into his wounds. The chill of the winter ocean hung around his shoulders. He heard grumbling in the darkness.

“Sorry, sorry.” Herring shook his head and touched the bottom of his feet, which burned his fingers. “Shit.” He stuck his fingers in his mouth, trying to suck off the salt.

“That tarp smells awful.” Said someone in the darkness.

Herring wrapped it around his body, waist deep in the water. “It’s all I got.”

It’s tough to tell when someone disappears. You always just figure they’re busy at work, or studying for finals, or on vacation, or something of the sort, so none of us thought anything was strange when we didn’t see Nodek for a while. Actually, to be brutally honest, none of us even noticed. I mean, he was kind of quiet to begin with, and only piped up when he had something to say. Half the time, you’d have to check the room list to know that he was even there. So I don’t know how long it took us. Maybe a week. Maybe two. But then, one day, this troll shows up and says something like:

NoobLOL42: star wars is for fagz!!!

We don’t get trolls very often, but Nodek was some kind of film geek, so he’d always rip them a new one in words that none of us understood. It was pretty funny to watch, actually, and it became kind of a running joke. So Jil says:

AdminJil4984: nodek? u hungry?

and there was no reply.

NoobLOL42: whos nodek?

AdminJil4984: whos nodek?!?!?!?!?!?

The last one to see him had been 3jane, who said she was in PM with him a few weeks ago, but when we tried to check the logs we got a server error. We weren’t freaked, though. Like I said, people come and go. We shot off a few PMs, but since we figured he was just on vacation or something, it took another week or so before we tried it oldschool with email. Mailerdaemoned.

At least a month had passed. A month. This is Nodek we’re talking about.

Admin3jane: does ne1 know his real name?

AdminJil4984: i got his mstracker number

Admin3jane: ??

AdminJil4984: 55772.0619.086/okl

We ran it. Nothing. Not just disconnected, either. It was like the hardware had never been MSregged. 3jane tried the chatlogs again, though, and this time, the request went through.

Admin3jane: its not here

AdminKack1: what?

Admin3jane: hes not in the logs. theres no profile either.

I checked. She was right. His profile was gone. When I went back over some of the logs, it seemed like he’d never been there. I remembered every conversation, but the lines I could have sworn he posted belonged to 3jane and Jil. Some of his stuff even ended up under my name. The funny thing was, I couldn’t be sure I’d never said it. After a few hours in a chat room every day for a year, you start to forget who belongs to what.

AdminJil4984: it must be a bug

Admin3jane: but were not missing ne conversations

AdminKack1: were missing a person!!

AdminJil4984: kack do u rememer nething he said? liek specifically?

AdminKack1: he said a lot of stuff. he liked books. he liked music. wtf? he was nodek. we all remember the stuff he said.

Admin3jane: well we need something exact to search

AdminKack1: thats why we keep logs in the 1st place!

I don’t know why it got to me so much. Like I said, people come and go. People change their names. But Google turned up nothing. AOL turned up nothing. It was like he’d never existed.

Time passed. Weeks, months. I mean, how long? How long do you wait for something like that?

AdminKack1: maybe hes dead

AdminJil4984: nodek?

AdminKack1: yeah. maybe he died and his family erased everything so they wouldn’t be reminded or something.

AdminJil4984: once he said he was going to join the army i think

Admin3jane: and they unregged his old pc? come on.

AdminKack1: maybe hes in the secret service

NoobSharick: who r u talking about?

AdminKack1: nodek

NoobSharick: ??

AdminKack1: he hasnt been around in a while, sharick

NoobSharick: ive been here months and i never saw him

AdminJil4984: this was before your time

Admin3jane: kack, jil, let it go. hes not in the logs

NoobSharick: ur making this up

AdminKack1: why the hell would i make this up

NoobSharick: maybe he never existed at all

AdminKack1: stfu noob, this is none of ur business

NoobSharick: im just sayin

AdminJil4984: he was here. we remember him

NoobSharick: but i dont

AdminJil4984: well have a cookie asshole

**NoobSharick HAS BEEN BANNED FROM THIS CHANNEL**

Admin3jane: wtf?

AdminJil4984: 3j, he was one of us even if hes dead or in the secret service or w/e.

Admin3jane: maybe he just had better stuff to do than sit online all goddamn day. maybe he erased himself.

AdminKack1: nodek wouldn’t do that.

Admin3jane: w/e. who knows. hes gone now and thats what matters.

AdminKack1: hes not gone, 3j. hes out there somewhere. people dont just disappear.

Sometimes, years later, I still Google him. I still email him. It’s always bounced, though. Absolutely nothing. But he has to be out there somewhere. People don’t just disappear.

The surprise was ready. Melanie had worked hard to ensure that this November would be the most wondrous time that her daughter, Fawn, had ever experienced. She’d made all the right calls and had the work done in a forest around their estate. As the workers departed, she left them with thanks and heart-felt appreciation for their services. They even received a fresh coating of sunscreen on their way out.

The laborers exited with large mallets in their hands only minutes before young Fawn was due home from school. In the coastal town of Nashville it was hard to find trees in abundance, so Melanie had chosen an estate an overview of a small forest near the backyard. Still, the great melting pushed the ocean closer and closer to their home, and Melanie worried that one day, all of the trees would be lost.

When the bus pulled up and the doors swooshed open, Fawn smiled to all of her friends and exited the yellow vehicle. She swung her UV umbrella held over her right shoulder as she skipped up the driveway to her mother. “Mommy, it’s my birthday!” she announced with a grin.

“I know, sweetie! I know! I got a big surprise for you waiting out back, too!”

“Really!?” The little girl’s squeal could not be contained as she took off, almost dropping her umbrella in the excitement. She tore around the house with her mother walking slowly in her wake, and when Melanie finally passed the gate, the most glorious scream of joy echoed across the yard.

There, amidst the naked sun-scorched field of grass, a huge pile of brown, crispy leaves flew from her daughter’s hands. The girl had already ditched her umbrella to dash up onto the deck and climb so that she could jump upon the pile. “Mommy, are they real? Where did you get all these leaves!?”

Melanie smiled with her arms crossed and gave her daughter a knowing smile. It was easy to believe these were fake dead leaves. In the perpetual summer, leaves never even turned yellow. “I had some workers come by and kill a few trees a few months back.” she said. “They collected them today and brought them out here just for you!”

Fawn smiled broadly, and when her mother watched her dive into the pile of flaky brown shapes, she knew it had been worth the cost and effort. The crunching sounds of the leaves brushing one another filled the yard as the girl swam her way out then dove back in as soon as she had reached the edge. The neighbors were watching at this point, amazed at the pile of dead things strewn about the yard across from them.

The day continued until the searing sun began to set, and Melanie picked up her little one to carry her inside. “That’s enough for now, sweetie,” she said.

“But Mommy, what if they turn green tomorrow? They’ll all go away!”

Inside, Melanie laid the child in her bed and pulled the covers over her shoulders. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said with a warm smile. “They won’t be green tomorrow. They’ll be just as dead as they were today.”

“Half-man, half-dinosaur!” A voice-over perfectly matched with the combination of human and tyrannosaurus genes that hovered above Zyi Izaiah Eizenberg’s holo snapped him awake. “The perfect candidate! He literally devours his opponents! Kennedy Rex wants what you want, and is not afraid to use his 4-foot long bone crushing jaws to get it!”

“You can’t believe the news today,” Zyi thought to himself, rubbing what sleep remained out of his eyes. “No one will ever take a Galactic Prime Minister seriously with those tiny little arms.” Then again, Zyi had heard that those diminutive appendages were apparently used for titillation during sex. The old boy may have shot in politics after all, depending on how quick his reflexes are.

Zyi smoothed out his old flight jacket so it looked less like he slept in it and strapped his goggles on. He had the holo set for a continual search on Kennedy Rex for purely research purposes; Zyi hadn’t counted on the man-lizard’s career being so boring that he’d fall asleep watching. Such was the inherent benefit and problem with having your political leaders grown from a lab: they had no real time to fuck up their careers. Not that it made Zyi’s job any harder, just more dull.

Zyi dialed his goggles for maximum visual pollution filter, blanking out pop-up displays and the sidewalk- and wall-embedded screens, leaving his only distractions the people in front of him and the cars on the street. Zyi had heard that the new implants don’t let you blank out that much, on the grounds that blanking out that much of the world made you unable to cope with the world around you. Which is why Zyi preferred his antique goggles. He liked to cope with the world as little as possible.

Boring as he was, Kennedy Rex was easy to find. When a six-hundred pound Prime Minister Candidate gave a press conference, there were only so many places it could happen. And a football stadium was out of the question. Not when the season had just started. The fans were already too used to the sense of blood, and, having camped out in the stadium for the duration of the season, they were eager for fresh meat. No, it would have to be outdoors. So Zyi took the mono to Fu Manchu Park, his goggles filtering out just about everything that would remind him of the era he was living in.

“See the Lizard King! Alive, alive, alive! ” Kennedy Rex’s press secretary was working up a good crowd. Early in her career she had speakers implanted in her chest, and those vocal mammories spewed forth sound bites in mesmerizing staccato. “Bear witness, folks, to the man, the monster, the future Prime Minister of the Galactic State! Forget what you think you know! Believe your eyes and your ears as this man, this monster takes your needs to heart! Truly, he is a symbol of the very times we live in!”

Kennedy made a benign gesture with his miniscule arms, but Zyi saw a look he recognized in the candidate’s eyes. A look of a predator, the look of hunger. Zyi had seen it enough on his own face.

Zyi closed his eyes and tried to recall the dream he always had, over and over, of a world he remembered but didn’t see anymore. He was pretty sure there were no mutant carnivorous reptile government leaders, but he wasn’t positive. The only thing he knew for sure was the job.

“I’ve got a question for the candidate!” Zyi shouted. “Do you know the times?”

Fire, holy vengeance, atomic blast, indignation. All these and several more erupted from Zyi’s raygun, leaving nothing more than a burned torso with emaciated arms and a cumbersome tail where the Possible Future Prime Minister once roared. Security was unsurprisingly useless, considering the might of the candidate. He was a part dinosaur, after all.

With the air thick with bar-be-qued lizard and the ozone of flash bulbs, Zyi removed his goggles and let the chaos flow over him.

Another job well done.

“So what you’re saying is that—”

“What I’m saying is that I want you to look at me when you speak!” Christie scowled at her husband. It was an argument they’d had at least a dozen times in the six months they’d been married.

“That’s what webcams are for.” Joel was stiff and tense, as he always was when talking in person.

“No. That is not the same.” Christie flung her arms out wide. “We spent two years in a long-distance relationship, Joel! Is it too much to ask that you talk to me every once in a while, not the words I write on your computer screen?”

“Christie… can’t we… calm down and talk about this like… civilized people?” Joel’s words always came after a delay in which he hesitated, going over them mentally, trying to make sure they were worded correctly before letting his wife see them.

“You mean talk about it over instant messenger!”

“No, no, I just mean—”

“You do! Don’t deny it, Joel Eric Stevenson. You don’t… you don’t love my body!” Christie used her Patented Wife’s Secret Weapon: the pouty trembling lip that threatened tears.

“No!” Joel was aghast. “Baby, no. I love your body. I could look at it all day…”

“On a computer screen! I want you to touch me, Joel! I want you, not some USB dildo! The Boyfriend Buddy was fine when we were just dating, but a wife deserves more! Don’t we have a marriage?”

Joel hastily crossed the room, awkwardly putting his hands on his wife’s shoulders and squeezing them. “Of course we have a marriage, sweetie,” he told her big brown doe-like eyes.

Christie sniffled artfully. “Really?”

“Really,” Joel promised her.

“Then how about you prove it to me, you big strong man, you?” Christie smirked, her eyes glittering with mischief, and slid her hand suggestively around Joel’s waist. Her husband’s eyes lit up.

“Great! I’ll go log on!”

Christie smacked her hand to her forehead. This was obviously going to take some work.

There were no trees on earth but despite this the Martian men took to the metal forest as easily as the native Martian woodlands. They battled the native Earthers in crumbling buildings and industrial towers, dead electrical lines strapped between sprawling cities. On Earth, this urban warfare was measured in inches.

Orion had slept in steel trees for a month now, though sleep wasn’t really the right word for the state of drowsy stillness he felt while resting in his net. Smoky earth days slipped into florescent nights and it was hard to make a clear distinction between them, loss of sleep blurring time. The stimulant pills made his heart thump against his breastbone, but it had stopped clearing the clouds from his mind, and even that nervous anticipation of violence, that fear, was beginning to fade against exhaustion.

Orion’s five companions were weeks dead, and he hadn’t the time to mourn them. Earthers used whatever weapons were available, black market rifles, stolen ray guns; they even unearthed toxins to pour in the path of the Martian forces. Earth was the cradle, earth was the battleground.

Orion climbed the high oilrig, one of the thousands that dotted the small cities, built to drill hopelessly through dry earth. Fixing his net between the iron bars of the rig, he lay and listened, putting his weapon on standby to save battery power. Orion debated taking a stimulant pill but he had only a four left, and wouldn’t get more till he reached the drop point, which could take weeks. Better to save them for the bad nights.

Orion set his motion alarm and tried to doze off, his last stimulant pill still rocking his heart. He imagined his heart must be bruised by now from bumping so hard against his breastbone. As he closed his eyes, his alarm sounded in his inner ear. Orion grabbed his ray gun and switched on his night vision, searching for a heat signature. Nothing. And then- a blur – a heat source climbing towards him. Orion powered up his raygun, shaking it, even though he knew that did nothing. The signature was eight feet from his position. He had three seconds till shot. One. Two. He pulled the trigger. There was a thud, as the heat signature reached the ground. The fear was back. Orion was awake the rest of the night, but there was nothing for those long hours. No more heat, no more movement.

In the morning, Orion climbed down and landed on top of last night’s excitement. The face was turned, and the smooth skin was splattered with blood. It was a child, still gripping a submission ticket, one of the many Martian forces had scattered over Earther settlements. The kid had come to surrender, and Orion has shot him in the face. Blood and bits of bone were matted in his hair. Orion took another stimulant to get through the day, no attention to conservation anymore. His heart pounded hard against its bone cage.

It’s not easy, you know. I’ve had to sit here until they needed me, just like all the rest, but they tell me I’m special. The scientists told me that I would be different than the others, that they pulled me from the plant and opened me up with the cutting edge of science. It’s an honor, of course. I understand this.

I have a beginning. Everything begins somewhere. Humans, machines, war. Unlike the others, though, I have a timer. A half-life. I feel like I’m vibrating and I know it’s because I’m on my way out.

I’ve never seen our enemy. They’re far off and foreign, barbaric and bestial, and dangerously close to building a being like me. The scientists never say that, of course, but I hear the words beneath their voices as they speak over the gears of my body. If it weren’t true, the project wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t be ticking. Thinking. Living.

Today is my day. I should be proud, but I feel sick, and I can’t tell if that sickness if nerves or the glowing matter buried inside of my stomach.

They are putting me on transport and the circuits of the plane beam with excitement at the chance for company. It’s a long flight and we talk about politics and discuss the issues of the day. We both agree that humans are funny. They gave us radio voices to hear their commands and the best technology available, but it never occurred to them that the artificial intelligence used to self-correct our faults might have introduced the greatest fault of all. They meant to build bombs, mindless explosives. They created kamikazes with a fear of death.

People are moving around me now. They are getting out of the way. Good luck, the transport whispers. It’s not luck, I tell him. It’s the glowing stuff inside of me that will be the end of this.

I’m in the chamber. I’m waiting. They’ll drop me out of transport and into the thoughtless embrace of gravity. Falling fast, I’ll feel my circuits flicker like a heart inside of me as I move towards the stopping point of time.

They started a war, but none of them fight it. They interpret our words as bugs in the programming. We are the silent soldiers, the weapons, and only once will our voices be heard. When the distance between the city and my body collapses into nothingness, I’ll scream my name and they’ll understand.

Boom.

I think I was about eight years old when I decided I was going to be a scientist.

When you’re eight, this sounds like the perfect career. I could see myself in a starched white lab coat surrounded by petri dishes and beakers as I looked into an antique microscope all day, and then, at night, charting the courses of stars. One wall of my laboratory would be made up of test tubes and jars, elements carefully isolated and waiting to be combined to dazzling effect. Another would be made of large cages, where impossibly white guinea-rats ran through complicated mazes as their brains sparked with the static of miniature electrodes. The third wall would be for very thick and very heavy books. Actual books, made out of paper and whatever the covers of books were made out of. I had read them a hundred times each. I had even memorized a few. Then, the last wall, my favorite because it had won me three Nobel prizes, was nothing but a green chalkboard covered with equations so complicated that I was the only one who could ever understand them.

This is what a great scientist I was when I was eight: the lab had four walls, and I hadn’t bothered to leave room for the door. Hopefully, one of those Nobel prizes was for a teleporter.

My father encouraged this insanity, and gave me this purple holographic projector that hung the same edufeed over my room every night, over and over. “Sally Stardust’s Cosmic Celebration,” it was called, and Sally Stardust was this bouncy cartoon girl who talked you through the feed with outdated slang and jokes about shopping. Fortunately, there was an option to do away with Sally, so I deleted her, junked the “stellar jewelry kit!!” and stuck her bioluminescent star stickers above my brother’s crib. Without Sally, the air beneath my ceiling flickered with suns and planets, and the facts were read in a hypnotic monotone by some lonely old man.

So I suppose the whole thing was that guy’s fault. Or maybe Hasbro’s fault, for hiring him to do the voice-over on what was really an ill-conceived toy to begin with, but either way, without that grape-colored contraption and its apathetic barrage of facts I might have never realized, on my ninth birthday, that my ninth birthday couldn’t possibly exist.

Here’s how it works: the Earth is revolving around the Sun, and our year is based on where we are in that orbit. So people have this idea that if you stand in a certain spot at a certain time on a certain day for two years in a row, you’re cosmically standing in the same place both times. This is wrong. Really, the sun’s moving around something too, and that something is moving around something and everything is rushing outwards, faster than cars, faster than airplanes, faster than rockets. I was millions of miles away from the place I was born in, but my mother apparently hadn’t heard Sally Stardust’s opinion on the matter, and after a relatively pointless screaming match I ran into my room and slammed my door shut. I wrote a bunch of random letters and pluses and minuses signs on a sheet of paper and pretended that I had worked out the secret of the universe, but after an hour or so I got tired of that. I gave the paper to my mother and told her that I had discovered a new equation that proved her right.

I think I was ten when I figured out that you have to be good at math to do science. After that, I painted Sally Stardust’s Cosmic Celebration a dark shade of blue and gave it to my brother. He was about four, I think. Age doesn’t mean much once you realize that you’re counting an imaginary thing.

“I’d like one Sephiroth, please.”

The voice of the timid, mousy-haired girl in front of the counter matched her appearance. Maggie sighed as she looked up from her paper. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Ah, no. Was I supposed to?” The shy girl looked uncomfortable and wrung her hands.

“For most of ‘em, no, but Sephiroth is one of our most popular models. We’ve got ten of them operational, and you still need to book a week in advance.” Maggie shook her head. “So sorry, kid, no can do. You need some suggestions? I’ve got the Final Fantasy section of the catalog here,” she offered, pulling out a well-worn and dog-eared magazine that held some of the brothel’s most popular products.

“Oh, no thank you,” said the girl, blushing. “I can pick another one on my own.” She chewed her lip for a moment, then spoke up again timidly. “Do you have, ah, a Spike?”

“Spiegel? You’re in luck, kid. He’s very popular too, but one of our regulars cancelled today. I’ll get him set up in a room for you.” Maggie tapped some numbers into her computer. “Need anything else? Lube, toys, handcuffs, lingerie?”

The girl’s face turned even redder. “Oh… oh, no thank you. I don’t need anything like that. But, ah…” She bit her lip again. “Could I also have… a Vicious?”

Maggie squinted down at the girl over the counter. “A Spike and a Vicious?” She eyed the girl’s slender frame. “They’re both pretty big, sweetheart. Are you sure you want them both on the same day? You might be sore afterwards.”

“Oh, no! No, not like that.” The girl’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t want to… to have them both,” she explained. “I just want them… ah… together.” A small, anticipatory smile spread over her pink lips.

Maggie’s eyebrows rose up into her bangs. It seemed she’d overestimated this girl’s naïveté. “Yaoi fan, huh?” The girl blushed and nodded, grinning wider, and Maggie backspaced over the information on her screen. “You should’ve said something. You’ll need a special chip for that. Those subroutines don’t come standard.”

Maggie reached over into the drawer and pulled out two chips wrapped in plastic, handing them across the counter to the girl. “You just give those to the handler when you get to the room and she’ll install them, okay?”

“Okay,” the girl repeated, nodding. She handed over her credit card and Maggie swiped it through.

“You’re all set, sweetheart,” Maggie told the girl, handing back the card. “You have fun now, you hear?”

The girl’s eyes positively sparkled with anticipation. “Oh, don’t worry. I will.”

Jesse McVeigh had lived long enough to remember a time before the wall was erected, way back before the seawall was necessary to keep back the waters of the Sea of Tranquility from encroaching on the borders of the city of Artemis. Old Jesse McVeigh will tell you about those days, if you ask him. He’ll do it if you don’t, too.

Jesse sits on a rocking chair on the porch of the Armstrong Inn, where his son is the proprietor. Sometimes he’ll sit with the old man, but more often than not he can’t spare the time. He’s heard all of the stories, anyway, he’ll say. Jesse McVeigh, like the moon, has no new stories.

Some stories are too old, even for Jesse. Ask about his life on Earth, for example, and Jesse McVeigh will rub the sleeve that covers the barcode tattooed on his right arm and change the subject.

Jesse McVeigh’s granddaughter, who happens to share his name, dreams of space and visiting Earth. Her father gave her a telescope, and she shows her grandfather the barren fields and jagged canyons of the old planet through the lenses, proudly reciting the names of each one. But old Jesse McVeigh only sees the trenches in which he and his brother hid from the iron colossuses. And he sees the grave of his brother, which he was forced to leave unmarked. Jesse McVeigh smiles and acts impressed with his granddaughter’s memory, but he does not look at Earth for very long.

Sometimes friends of Jesse McVeigh will sit with him. They will not talk about their barcodes, or who they were before the moon. They will talk about the chill in the air off the Sea of Tranquility, how the fish and crab harvest will be affected. They will talk of the hotel business, of recipes for beef stew and jing char siu bau and doro alicha, of pains in new places. They will talk about when Artemis was smaller, of sons and daughters and grandchildren, of the possibilities of moving to warmer New Houston. These topics are as old as the wall itself.

Once once in awhile, a young person will bring up terra-forming Earth back to how it was before the war. That the moon cannot continue to hold the human race, that they were running out of room as it was. That going back to Earth is rapidly becoming the only option. And Jesse McVeigh and his friends will scoff. But they know the truth, that the wall on the edge of the Sea of Tranquility exists to keep the city from drowning the water just as much as it keeps the water from drowning the city. That someday, there will not be enough room. The walls will not be enough.

Jesse McVeigh will not be among those that return. He will stay on the moon, stare into its blue sky, and try very hard to put the Earth behind him.

Moresheck was one of the brutish, ham handed psychics that roamed the twisting urban alleys of the north face of Mars. All his rapes were consensual. All his fights were fatal. He was a free citizen bound only by his ability to pay for damages, but no one ever got far enough to charge him. Getting close to Moresheck meant getting lost in a personal hell.

He was thirteen when he had been manually altered, sold by his parents to the Corporation that ran Mars, pumped full of steroids and a cloud of little machines that created a complex cocktails of enzymes designed to produce emotional reactions in a projected subject. Years later the practice had been outlawed but by that time Moresheck had twisted enough minds to get himself made into a free citizen. Even the government Pods couldn’t touch a freeman. He wore yellow to appear dangerous and sleek, but it was the brain cocktail that really made people quiver. Moresheck wandered the streets invading minds, thrashing around in higher consciousness like a mad bull in a shop of Venetian glass.

Sleeping was the dangerous time for Moresheck; it was only then that people could hurt him. Moresheck stole pills so that he could stay awake for a few weeks before collapsing. When he did sleep, he crashed in empty apartments and in the deserted Martian sewers, where streams of mud slugged slowly under the planet.

Moresheck first saw the dark man outside the sewer one morning, just sitting, watching the sky and smoking as if he didn’t see the giant brute emerging from the sewers. Moresheck thought about taking his cigars, smoking was illegal and cigars were a hard item to find, but for some reason Moresheck just passed him by. Two days later, the dark man was outside a shop where Moresheck had convinced the employees to fit him for new clothes. Afterwards, he tried to remember the dark mans face and realized he could not. Not one detail. Moresheck began to grow worried. What if he was becoming schizoid? It happened, sometimes, to psychics, especially powerful ones. Maybe the dark man was his mind playing tricks.

After that, he saw the dark man more often, standing on buildings looking down, at cafes and hubs and transport docks. As much as Moresheck hated the figure of that dark man, he was for the first time since he was a child, afraid to approach someone. What if the dark man has the power to hurt him, or worse, what if the dark man wasn’t real, what if he would dissolve when Moresheck got too close?

Moresheck felt a heated pressure growing inside his body and he needed to blow it off, to relax again. Moresheck headed to his favorite little spot, one he saved for special occasions, the one with the girl with the small hands. Moresheck thought of her as his girl, his alone, the one who would love him and wait for him. Her mind was so soft, she would say whatever he wanted, however he wanted. An hour with her, and he could forget about the dark man.

The dark man was waiting in the street outside the girl’s place, hands jammed in his pockets. Moresheck tried to memorize his features, repeat them back to himself but they drained out as quickly as he said them.

“I think you’ve done enough.” Said the dark man, reaching into his coat. Moresheck concentrated. If the man was real, he would bend to Moresheck’s will. The man just stood there as the brutes face puffed red.

“I pay for all my damages.” Said Moresheck, shaking his head.

“I’m not with the Pods.” Said the dark man as he reached into his coat. “I don’t care about your crimes.”

“You are not real, dark man. You can’t hurt me.”

Moresheck ejected the little chemical compounds, the little bugs that changed the minds of his victims. The man pulled his hand out of his coat. Moresheck was surprised to see that it wasn’t a flash gun. It was a tissue. The man blew his nose.

“Buddha’s belly, Moresheck, your ejaculate makes my head hurt.”

“Fear me.” Said Moresheck, trying to inject strength into his voice. It was flat. He spit on the ground and scratched his hands, releasing more of his cocktail into the air. The mans nose bled, but there was no fear in his face.

“You’ve been all over this city, raping whatever moves, taking what’s not yours, splitting minds, making madness. It’s over, you are done.”

Moresheck roared with the temper of a thirteen year old boy defied, red faced, he rushed at the man in the long black coat, screaming. The man cut his own hand with an unfolded pocket knife, and splattered the blood on Moresheck s face. The blood boiled on Moresheck s skin, like acid on plastic, bubbling and warping. Moresheck launched himself at the dark man, wrapping his huge fingers around his throat. The man struggled, smearing his bloody hands over Moreshecks melting skin. Moresheck roared in pain, and then his eyes rolled back into his head, his body convulsing, a cloud of metallic dust blowing out his nose and mouth. Moresheck collapsed and the dark man rolled the giant off of him and stood, shaking his bloodied hand on the red dirt, which sputtered and fumed at the with the touch of the acidic droplets.

The dark man rubbed his throat where the prints of Moreshecks fingers were bruising his skin and clutched his hand, waiting to feel relief.

“Open this door. Right now. I mean it! Open the damn door!” Herbert kicked the car door in frustration. “Honey, will you please tell the car to open the door?” he asked through clenched teeth.

Herbert’s wife, Alice, peered up at him through the driver’s side glass from her seat on the passenger’s side. “I don’t think she will, darling,” she told her husband. “I think she’s upset about something.”

“She? This is not a she. This is my car. I bought and paid for it. Its purpose is to take me where I want to go, not get us lost in the middle of nowhere and then refuse to let me back in!”

“Step away from the car.” The mechanical female voice somehow managed to sound annoyed even through its programmed sugary sweetness.

“Honey, can’t you at least try to empathize with her?” Alice pleaded. “I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

“I don’t care what the car is trying to tell us!” Herbert shouted, thoroughly exasperated. “The only thing I want my car to tell me is which direction I am driving and what the weather is!”

“Caution! Your oil is low,” the car told him caustically. Alice pouted from inside.

“Herbert, we bought a smart car for a reason. She has feelings too. Maybe you aren’t taking care of her properly,” Alice said pointedly.

“I’ve gone in for all the scheduled maintenance,” Herbert protested, wondering why he felt on the defensive against both his wife and his car.

“Warning! A seatbelt is undone,” the car seemed to growl, and Alice crossed her slim arms across her chest.

“See, Herbert? She is trying to tell us that she feels unsafe. It’s not right of you to ignore her concerns.”

“Concerns?” Herbert nearly exploded, but with clenched fists, he managed to calm down. Deep breaths, he told himself. Deep breaths. “All right,” he said at last, through clenched teeth. “All right. Car. If I promise to bring you in to the dealer as soon as we get home for a check-up and hot wax, will you please open this door?”

The car rumbled suspiciously. “And an oil change,” Alice prompted.

“And an oil change,” Herbert agreed, trying very hard not to scream.
The car hesitated for a moment more, then grudgingly unlocked the driver’s side door. Herbert stomped in and closed it, settling into his seat with a disgruntled air.

“There, sweetie. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Alice cooed. Herbert couldn’t tell whether she was talking to him or his car.

“Damn it,” Herbert muttered to himself as he started the car. “That’s it. To hell with cars. Next midlife crisis, I’m buying a dog.”

It was Friday evening and Lucas was getting ready to perform his duty. He’d already tugged off his leather loafers to put on a pair of combat boots. He’d disheveled his black hair in front of the bathroom mirror and traded his pinstripe jacket for an old worn t-shirt and army fatigue vest. After arranging these things, he looked himself over in the full body mirror and decided whether or not he would be afraid of himself.

Lucas ate a bowl of chicken noodle soup and drank some iced tea. He figured he could make use of the empty tea bottle as a Molotov cocktail if need be, and he chuckled at the thought. It was funny to him how he came to think of this as humorous. The rest of the world never seemed to get the joke.

8:00 pm rolled around and he heard the phone ring in the kitchen. He wiped off his mouth after finishing the soup and went to pick up the line. “Hello, Merryweather residence. Lucas speaking.” Lucas listened as the reminder that his Friday night was ruined berated him through the receiver.

“Look, I already told you,” Lucas continued as he went to tap the opened letter on the counter as if he’d somehow forgotten why he was dressed like this. “I have Riot Duty today. I told you this last week. No, we can’t play poker. No, I can’t get out of this. You know how much they fine people for skipping out on Event Assignments.”

He went on to explain that he barely knew what he would be rioting for. The protest itself didn’t matter: it was the violence at the end.. Lucas was frustrated, but the government was strict when it came to people who didn’t show up for their civic duty. Civilization had to move forward, after all.

“Yeah, I know it sucks. Hey, listen, I have to get going. Tell the guys I’m sorry and that I’ll catch them next week.” He held the phone between his ear and shoulder as he loosened his belt to let the fatigued pants slump around his waist into a more comfortable position.

“Hah, right. Very funny. The police haven’t won in over two years, so this is probably something they secretly want.” When Lucas refastened his belt, he glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Look, I’m gonna be late. Later, man.” He hung up the phone and grabbed the ice tea bottle from the counter.

Lucas never asked questions when it came to his civic duty. In the past, he’d been called in to riot, and called in to be a witness at assassinations. It was the responsibility of a citizen to do his part for the country. Looking into the bottle, he scrunched his nose as he walked towards the door. He needed to stop and get gas.

The glass beads were black and white: tiny flattened circles that made a loud clattering sound when he emptied the bag onto the glowing white floor. Most of the 1,394 settled within a few feet of his legs, although a few rolled to the outer reaches of the room.

“The problem here is that you don’t understand the potential,” Sudoku told her without lifting his attention from the beads. “You use this thing to play games and watch stimvids. You’ve never even opened the console.”

“And this is the console.”

“This is what the console looks like today.”

From her position on the floor across from him, Ery glanced around the room, then snorted. “Nice. Well, now that that’s over with, I’m going to go finish my coffee.”

“This room isn’t actually empty,” he said when the edges of her body started to shimmer with logout. She recondensed with a sigh that was slightly louder than necessary.

“I know an empty room when I see one.”

“There’s me. And you.”

“And stimvid pickup lines, apparently. But there’s coffee back in your apartment, and it’s winning.”

He wiped the beads into a small pile, then swept them onto his palm before spilling them over the floor again. “What’s a stimvid, Ery?”

“I’m not going to justify that with an answer.”

“It’s a program that shows you exactly what you want to see, right?”

“Right.”

“Because the program is written to pick up on your unique desires. Imagine what kind of engine something like that would have to run on. And don’t even ask about the hardware.”

She sighed. Although he didn’t look up, Sudoku recognized the expression on her face.

“Go touch the wall,” he told her.

Ery stood up and stepped around the pile of beads with uncharacteristic care. Beneath her fingers, the wall was smooth and glossy, reflective. She followed it to the corner as she searched for imperfections. None.

“What does it feel like?” he asked.

“Plastic.”

“Because that’s what you expect.”

As her fingers dragged along the surface, it became rougher, softer. In a brief flicker, she saw warm patterns of woven fiber, plush reds and yellows swirling together only to disappear into blank whiteness an instant later. Ery stopped. “What was that?”

“It’s a Persian rug. You’ve probably never seen one.”

“I know what they are. But-”

“It’s just a matter of deciding what you want to see, then seeing it. You’re doing it right now, but you don’t realize it.”

Ery pulled her hand away and squinted at the featureless blank. When it yielded nothing to her scrutiny, she returned to her place opposite him. “What am I changing?” she asked.

“Me.” Sudoku emptied the bag again. This time, most of the escaping beads were deflected by Ery’s seated body and settled back in the space between them.

She frowned, and waited.

“This isn’t what I actually look like.”

“I’ve seen you thousands of times.”

“Exactly. You’ve seen me thousands of times.” Neglecting the beads, Sudoku met her eyes. “Right now, I’m the person you picture when you think about Sudoku. I’m not the person I see when I look in the mirror. Likewise, you appear the way I see you.”

“What do I look like?”

Sudoku chuckled. He began gathering the beads again. “I told you. You look exactly like you look on the outside. To me, I mean. You look the way I see you.”

“So if you can change the things in this room just by thinking about them in the right way, why do you do the bead thing? If you created them with your mind, don’t you already know how many there are?”

“It’s not the counting,” Sudoku said as he scattered them for a third time. They lay around his legs, disregarded, waiting to be numbered. He bit his lip and stood up as he searched for phrases. Language had never been one of his strong points. “I don’t even think about the counting. My mind does that on it’s own. It’s more about the pattern when they fall out. I just can’t deal with these rooms. Everything is so…” he took a few steps, facing the wall, “so easily controlled, I guess. But if I create enough beads the mainframe has to take over and control them as they fall. The more I watch it, the more I understand the mainframe.” He turned to face her.

“So what happens then?”

Sudoku smiled for four seconds before closing his eyes to log off. As his image flickered away the uncounted beads dissolved into ether, but Ery hesitated, wondering what would remain after she left.

“There’s an element of theatre to all this, ain’t there?” the sheriff said. Malachai Singh was a gruff man, but a fair sheriff, and Sister Britney took this into account when she spoke to him.

“Jeddeloh is our home. We’re here to assess the damage, get some closure.” She motioned behind her to the hundreds of people bottle-necking through the checkpoint. “For we have sworn we shall return to our homes on this day no matter who or what shall–”

“Save the speeches for the cameras, Sister.” Sheriff Singh pushed the brim of his hat back and squinted in the glare of the twin suns. “I got eyes. More’n two-thirds of these folks have been back here already. This here is grandstanding.”

Sister Britney brought herself up to her full five feet, wimple bristling. “I will not have you belittle our impassioned and brave re-entry into this disaster area that was once our home!”

Sheriff Singh slowly sat down in the dirt, his back toward the two suns and sluggish crowd under them. Directly ahead of him, miles off, lay the massive crater the locals had taken to calling “Judgment.”

“You ever been in dust storm, Sister? Me neither, ’till me and my boys got caught in the one that meteorite kicked up. It’s like a swarm of insects, ‘cept smaller and bigger all at once. And you’re swimming in that, that and ruins from the impact of the blast. Nothing’s solid, you know? Everything falls apart easy in a storm like that.

“I had a boy on my force, shot himself in the head. Right in front of his co-workers, he did. Like the job wasn’t hard enough on them already.

“You left, Sister. You and those who could, you left. I ain’t gonna preach to a woman of the cloth, but you aught to choose your words better next time you open that mouth God gave you. I’ll give you impassioned. But this ain’t bravery. The ground’s too clean.”

Sister Britney placed her hand on Singh’s shoulder. She searched for something to say, half-remembering a sermon she had given for a televised benefit some years back, on the rewards of hardship. But it all vanished from her mind when Sheriff Singh grabbed her hand and held it tight. Sister Britney looked back at what remained of the city she had once called home, and then turned to take in the devastation that small rock from space had caused upon what had once been pristine farmland. The lack of contrast forced her silent.

The suns were still low in the sky, as the two of them stared at the crater, one on the ground and the other seemingly using the first for support. The air had a distinct chill to it, and the shadows ahead of Sister Britney and Sheriff Singh were long and lean.

As you are probably aware, the writers of 365 Tomorrows has been invited to be guests at PhilCon 2005. PhilCon will be held on December 9th to 11th, at theMarriot Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. Here’s a list of the panels we shall be speaking at:

• Fri 9:00 PM in 306—Science Fiction about “Touchy” Subjects (146)
Why is science fiction good at talking about things people don’t want to address?
Myke Cole (mod), Stephanie Burke, Camille Anthony, J.R. Blackwell, Tony Ruggiero

• Fri 10:00 PM in 306—The Impact of Online Magazines on the Genre (143)
Save our trees!
Rob Balder (mod), J.R. Blackwell, Robert Jeschonek, James Patrick Kelly, Mike Pederson, Alyce Wilson

• Sat 10:00 AM in Liberty C—Science Fiction: Gen X (179)
Does the 80s generation have a different idea of what good science fiction is?
Tony Ruggiero (mod), Stephanie Burke, Mike Pederson, Jared Axelrod, Joe McCabe

• Sat 2:00 PM in 303—Writing for an Online Audience (283)
In today’s high tech world a writers audience may just as easily be reading their work on a monitor as a page. Four writers and a publisher who have worked on online publishing talk about their experience writing for an online audience, managing forums, publicity, writing for a deadline, merchandising and nurturing ones fanbase.
J.R. Blackwell (mod), J. Loseth, Nick Popio, Brian York, Jared Axelrod

• Sat 5:00 PM in 413—In Their Own Words (100)
Many of these panels will dwell on the look or content of anime. But what about the sound? Here’s your chance to get to know what happens in the recording booths from the mouths of the professionals themselves.
Amy Howard-Wilson (mod), J. Loseth, Kristen Nelson

• Sun 1:00 PM in Salon G—Flash Fiction (284)
The cutting edge of fiction, Flash Fiction, has the heart of a short story and the soul of a poem. The writers of 365 tomorrows, a website that deal exclusively in flash fiction discuss the differences between writing a short story and a short, short, short story. How much story there possibly be in 500 words? The answer may surprise you!
J.R. Blackwell (mod), J. Loseth, Jared Axelrod, Nick Popio, Brian York

“Oops!” a golden egg dropped from Yizzies mouth onto the glowing floor. “There goes another baby!” she laughed and a skittering spider came with a dustpan to clean the mess. Raich pulled his eyes out and threw them halfheartedly at Yizzie before plugging his sockets into the curling white wall.

“You’re a fashion slut.” he said, and dialed up the sexual exploits of AmiAmi, the Lacronic music star. The spiders rushed to service him.

“Don’t be so viral Raich, the duckling eggs are the New Thing! The capsule people love to see the gold drop from my mouth.” Raich wasn’t paying attention. His body was gyrating under the sensory nodes, his extra parts swelling and expelling orange juice. Yizzie sighed and dialed into her audience, accepting their mechanic adulations.

“Mmm!” she moaned, her green hair flashing with static sparks. “They love me!”

“You’re a slut.” muttered Raich between gasps as the spiders swirled over his pale body.

Yizzie giggled and removed her top, the first request of the morning. Her breasts greeted a thousand screens. She licked her finger. “Someone has to pay the tax.” Yizzie said, shaking her chest. “What you do doesn’t make us anything but juice.”

“At least I don’t whore myself.” He grunted and orange juice plopped on the floor, followed by a scrubbing spider. Raich fell backward to the sound of Lacronic melodies, landing on a cushion held by a hundred robotic limbs. “I only plug in for the music.”

“This planet needs a Messiah so you and I have to fuck.” Sydec said. He didn’t mean for it to come out that way but the tests were absolutely fail-proof, and he needed to express the urgency of the matter to Vsha. That’s aside from the fact that he wasn’t always too keen on delivering. When science finally broke the genetic code, religion took a look at it and had an idea. Sydec had an idea earlier that week, and so he went to the clinic to see if the stars and the scientists agreed.

“Well that’s a bit crude, isn’t it!?” Vsha snapped. She stormed from the room and grabbed her atmospheric suit to go out for a walk on the soil. Vsha had talked about this with him thousands and thousands of times. No sex before marriage, period. No post-script, no addendum, just no sex.

Sydec was already leaping after her in a bout of apologies for the words that dared cross his lips. “Vsha, please! I had the tests run and you know how solid they are. Look, all I’m saying is that this is one in every million successful pregnancies. You can’t give up a chance at destiny, can you?”

The reluctant girlfriend stopped at the airlock, her suit half zipped up and her shoulders slumped in a defeated motion. “Can’t it be someone else? I mean, he’s going to get martyred or get captured or just disappear. You know how these things happen, Sydec.” Her voice was distraught.

“Sweetie, darling… “ the man began as he placed his hands over her shoulders. Rubbing his palms against her muscles gently he resumed, “This is not about sex, it’s about the future of the planet. Of existence! The genes are right, everything is right. The clinic says that if we conceive in the next month or so there’s an 85% chance that it will be a true Messiah.”

She turned slowly. Her smile was weak and so was her conviction. Her gorgeous green eyes stared up at him, looking for a hint of compassion. Vsha saw something to hope for on the surface of her boyfriend’s face. She needed him to agree. It was the only way he could feel comfortable. When the heavens put pressure on you, it was far worse than a bad boyfriend. “So… it’s really not about the sex?” she asked.

It was. “No, of course not!” he exclaimed as he shook his head in a desperate attempt to persuade her that he meant it. She leaned into his arms and Sydec knew that he’d made the right move. “Let’s just sit down and think about this, honey.”

They both turned towards the kitchen and he graciously pulled the chair out for her. “I’ll get the wine.”

The cloister, in the grand tradition of all ancient edifices like it, is cold. It is by necessity metallic, unlike its predecessors, but as if to make up for this failing, its cold is that of the utter desolation of space. To walk inside, I must wear a full survival suit, though gravity is maintained for the sake of the visitors. It does not impact the nuns in the least.

The cloister is composed of only three rooms. The foyer contains the airlocks, used by visitors and maintenance workers alike, as well as official dignitaries from the church. It is also the house of the cloister’s huge crucifix, depicting Our Savior in his moment of sacrifice. To the left is the control room, accessible only to those who come to maintain the station’s mechanical systems. Directly below the crucifix is the door that leads to the chamber of the nuns.

They hang on the walls suspended, preserved, each encapsulated in the soft blue glow of her life support pod. They are frozen in time, heartbeats only once a year, in perfect homage to He who drew them here. There are no novices in the cloister. The cold, silent hall is the pinnacle of a nun’s creed: from the moment she arrives with her vocation, she is inducted into perpetual solitude, perpetual suffering. Only His true brides, those who intend to spend eternity as His handmaids by eschewing all worldly ties, wish to enter here.

I stare at the faces of the nuns, high above, each illuminated by the humble glow of their chambers. Their faces are similar but unique, each contorted in a different stage of silent ecstasy. Some are worn and caved in. The tissue-rotting microbes have done their slow work over decades or in some cases centuries, blessing the nuns with the sweet scourge of His sacrifice, extended over millennia. These are the faces, drooping and unrecognizable as they might be, that hold the most joy.

They are strong. They are meek. They are beautiful. They are modest. They are filled with conviction. They are eternal.

They are Woman. I am mere flesh.

Subject 643-M, age eight, sits cross-legged on the floor. Before him, a wide array of screens flicker rapidly, some with pictures, some words, some numbers. Thick tubes connect from the ceiling to a horizontal row of ports on his back.

He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t have to. Time is meaningless to a Scryer.

The boy’s fingers hover over a small black control box. He touches it sometimes, and images flicker more rapidly, or pause, or rewind. He rarely rewinds. The boy never misses anything.

When he sleeps, he sleeps in front of the screens. He likes the patterns, and he needs the ports. Sleep is a symptom of increased elusidol tolerance, so his dosage is increased to match.

Soon, the boy will be disconnected. The man worries about this. There are 12 others, but this one is the most talented. The man is concerned, but he knows he can get a few more years. He hopes the war is over by then.

The boy speeds through another segment, selecting words and pictures. No numbers this time. It’s not the boy’s responsibility to break the code, merely to locate it. The man hits record, and the pattern vanishes from the screens.

The boy doesn’t remember it. The next feed begins, and he touches the controller, upping the pace. The man closes the door behind him when he goes to check on the other children.