365 tomorrows

Author : J.Loseth, Staff Writer

Am I ready for tomorrow? Of course I am. It’s the biggest day the movement’s ever seen. This rally is going to go down in history, and it’s going to change everything. Have a drink? I know I need one. Tomorrow’s daunting, but you know what? We need it, and it’s about time.

Know what the problem is with evolutes? I’ll tell you. We’re too nice. Too nice and too protected. Do you know, sometimes I wish for a hate crime? I lie awake and pray that some hick will see a webfoot at the grocery and go ballistic, beat the filthy mutant to death and dump her body in a ditch. Don’t look so appalled. Of course it’s barbaric, of course it’s against the law. That’s just the point. We’ll never get anywhere being half-protected, wards of the state but with the civil rights of a house pet. It’s not enough to be permitted to keep breathing. We need to be able to live.

Which means I need to die.

Don’t follow? Listen. It makes perfect sense. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Jesus Christ… they all died for their causes. Of course they didn’t plan it that way, but it worked, didn’t it? It’s the ultimate sympathy play: the poor, pacifist leader is martyred by radicals, proving his moral superiority to his foes and gaining support for his cause. If we stick to the plan, if I lead a stirring rally with inspiring speeches to great acclaim, nothing will change. We’ll have barely a blip on the six o’clock news. We need more than that; we need something big. We need our own martyr.

No, this is not hypothetical. But you guessed that, didn’t you? I know. It’s your job. Unfortunately, I can’t have you doing your job. Police were easily bribed, security guards bought off, but my personal bodyguard? There was no way around it. I’m sorry it had to come to this, but you were just too good.

It was in the whiskey. You won’t feel it. You won’t show up tomorrow but I’ll say the show must go on, and only after I’m dead will they find your body. Yes, you could kill me now if you like, but the cover story wouldn’t be as compelling. I’m afraid you’re already dead, so you might as well let my plan continue. At least it will mean something.

Good. I’m glad you can still see reason.

Me? Of course I’m calm. Didn’t I tell you I’ve been ready for tomorrow for longer than you could know? You see, I have always wanted to die. Can you imagine how it feels to wake every morning to the betrayal of your own body? There is nothing I can do, no medical practice that will make me right, or whole, or fully human. You people, you sympathizers… You may feel sorry for us, but you’ll never understand. Someday there may be treatments to normalize us or maybe even to stabilize the mutations, but it won’t happen in my lifetime. I’ve had enough of pain. I don’t want to live like this.

It’ll be quick. The gunman will come from my left. He won’t be frisked at the gate, the guards will be a bit too slow to react, and in one clear shot, I’ll be gone. Dead, yes—but I’ll go down in history, so in a way, I’ll live forever.

Sorry I can’t promise you a similar immortality. Getting sleepy yet? Don’t fight it. Think of it as protecting my values, if not my body. That may help; I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been one for loyalty.

Just remember, it’s for the cause.

Author : J. Loseth, Staff Writer

“To employment!” Skye burst into the apartment with a bottle raised, cheeks pinked. He already looked like he’d had a toast or two before coming home. Fauntleory looked up from the armchair he was draped over with a frown, then got to his feet and deftly nipped the bottle from his roommate’s hand.

“Vodka? Since when do you drink vodka?” Of course, Fauntleroy wasn’t complaining. He grabbed an ornamental glass from the shelf behind him and filled it, too lazy to go to the kitchen.

“Since I got a job.” Skye had a big, sloppy grin on his face. He plucked the bottle back from Fauntleroy and helped himself to a sip right out of the container. His eyes were sparkling.

Fauntleroy frowned. “Is this some crime syndicate job or something? On the run from the law just like you?”

“Since when can I not hold a real job?” Skye asked, mock-affronted, though he still couldn’t hide the twitches of his mouth. “I am a perfectly respectable citizen!” He slurred his words just a little, flopping indolently on the couch and taking another swig of liquor.

“Yeah. You were a respectable citizen,” Fauntleroy said. “Until that little incident last week that you seem to have forgotten. You were found out! You’re registered now! No one in their right mind would ever hire a registered lycanthrope! Unless… you found some way to clear the federal records?” Fauntleroy’s eyes widened, and he did a poor job of concealing his hope. Luckily, Skye was the drunk one for once, so Fauntleroy figured nobody would notice.

A grimace broke through Skye’s alcoholic glee and he shook his head. “Sorry, nothing that good. But the next best thing.” He paused for dramatic effect, straightening as that incorrigible grin crept back onto his face. “I’m going to be a police dog. Sniff out drugs and other illegal stuff. They need someone they can communicate with to do the job.”

For a moment Fauntleroy just stared. “I thought you could only do the man-beast scary thing.”

“Shows how much you know.” Skye stood and set the glass aside, concentrating. His body shifted, muscles bulging and tightening, bone structure melding into something else. Black fur sprouted from his dark skin, and in moments an admittedly wolfish dog stood in a pile of Skye’s clothes. His canine mouth gaped and his long pink tongue lolled out in a grin.

“Well I’ll be,” Fauntleroy murmured. “Makes sense, though… a versatile officer with talents they don’t have. They need you, so they’ve got to give you some rights, even if you’re registered. What a scam.” His head tilted as he looked down into Skye’s warm brown wolf eyes. “Let’s just hope they don’t send you sniffing for faggots.”

Skye’s body rippled and changed, returning to his normal form, albeit with a frown on his face and nothing in the way of clothes. “I thought I told you not to use that word,” he said, giving Fauntleroy a disapproving look. “And if they do…” He took a step closer, then smirked. “I’ll just sniff your crotch and move right on by.”

At that, even the cynical Fauntleroy had to grin. He raised his glass and was rewarded with the return of Skye’s infectious grin. “To your new job, then, Officer.” At last, things were looking up.

Author : J.Loseth, Staff Writer

It was good money. Everyone said so, on the newscasts and the Internet, repeating the slogan from the billboards: Everyone’s Rich in the Colonies. Drake had read over the contract, and the money was indeed good. The wealth in the colonies was so abundant that the contract even included a subsidy for his house, and it was a real house, not a cramped pod or even a flat. Drake had seen pictures. It looked like something out of a storybook. “I’ll get to see real grass,” he’d told Delilah, but still she frowned. It was good money, he reminded her. How many people in their neighborhood could boast that kind of salary? None, that’s how many.

His parents had been relieved. All their relatives congratulated him for passing the screening. Drake was proud of that; he’d been lucky to miss out on the genes for anything debilitating, and though he’d only barely squeaked by the vision test, he still had the green light. Not many could say that nowadays. “It means there aren’t any diseases,” he explained to Delilah, but she rolled her eyes. “It just means you aren’t bringing any diseases to them,” she told him primly. “There’s nothing in there about the type of diseases they might give you.” Drake had to admit she had a point, but it was good money, so he let it slide.

For four months Drake sold off his possessions, slowly liquidating his old life to make way for the new. He couldn’t take more than two bags, after all, and he’d need the startup cash. Delilah recognized the necessity and even scraped up enough to buy a few items from him. He didn’t tell her how much he appreciated it, but he was sure that she knew. It was just like her to know. As the departure approached, though, tensions rose. They fought more. Sometimes Delilah would stalk out at the end of the night without saying a thing, and sometimes she’d fix Drake with a look of reproach that was worse than words. It made it hard to pack, but he thought of the money and was resolute. “You could have applied too,” he reminded her once during one of their bitter fights. “Then we’d both be going. They even let couples live in the same place.” He hadn’t gotten a response to that, just the slam of the door in his face. She’d always come back the next day, though, so Drake shoved the fights under the rug and always let her in.

“Will you visit?” she asked. The question made Drake uncomfortable. “I’ll write,” he promised, holding her hands on the landing pad, eyes on their interlocked fingers. “It’s a long trip, Del, and they don’t pay for that much vacation time. A message can get here in just a few hours. It’ll be fine.” Delilah didn’t seem to like that, but she nodded anyway. The conductor called for all aboard, and Drake began to extricate his hands, but Delilah gripped them suddenly and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “When your two years are up, I’ll be finished. I’ll be done with school and we can start a life together. We can find a place when you get back.”

Drake felt his throat closing up. He squeezed her hands by way of answer, then slowly let go, heading up to the stasis pod door. It was the only facility of its kind, the only method for suspending human life well enough to protect the travelers on their journey through sub-space. The colonies might be rich, but they could never muster enough technological minds to build and maintain such a thing. Delilah didn’t, couldn’t know, but the money was good, so Drake didn’t tell her. He watched through the porthole until the pod filled with gas and knew she would never forgive him.

“So Jeynce and Carr are getting married in three months.”

Ernest was projecting on the top of the decorative bridge, tossing tiny sticks into the flowing water. They’d chosen an ancient Japanese theme for this afternoon, and he hoped that Ilyah found it relaxing, because Ernest was bored by the tranquility.

“Wow. That’s a surprise.” Ilyah’s eyebrows rose and she swung her leg over the shimmering water idly trying to discern the repeat cycle of the scenery projection. “They’re pretty young. But if that’s what they’re going to do, why wait so long?” She batted at a low-hanging branch with her toe. “Cold feet?”

“Nah.” Ernest shook his head. “They’re followers of Dra’nar, remember? They’re doing it the old-fashioned way. Embodied,” he clarified.

Ilyah’s expression registered mild distaste. “How odd,” she commented, a liberal to the last. “It’s hard to believe anyone still holds with those old customs.”

Ernest shrugged. “To each their own,” he said, and Ilyah nodded with practiced political correctness. “Still,” he added, “I’m actually surprised they could find an open space large enough to hold it that wasn’t under radiation lockdown.”

“The guests are expected to embody, too?” Ilyah was aghast. “Old customs are one thing, but to impose them on everyone else… that’s just rude.”

“Of course not,” Ernest told her with a sigh. “But for that big an occasion, the projections will be programmed for no impact, so they have to have room for everyone to stand.”

“Still seems sort of vulgar in the modern age,” Ilyah mused. Ernest said nothing. He knew better than to argue with his wife.

At last, Ilyah sighed and stood, stretching with a little yawn. “Well, I’m going to log and make something to eat,” she informed Ernest. “Want to meet in the house program at seven?”

Ernest nodded, and when Ilyah bent down, he brushed the lips of his wife’s projection with his own. Ilyah smiled and shimmered, disappearing from the scene. With a sigh of relief, Ernest touched the controls and switched to something more palatable. Something with feeling. The tranquil garden was replaced by a dark slummy city street, an exact replica of the one above ground in every respect save the radiation. Ernest’s mouth twitched. No matter how much she professed to be a modern woman, his wife really was an old-fashioned girl.

“Are you sure?”

Lena bit her lip and nodded. “Yes. Very sure.” Her voice was quiet but strong. She needed this.

The counselor nodded, looking down at her clipboard as she checked off items. “All right. I’ve noted your reasoning. The records will be sealed, of course, after the procedure is finished; if you look them up you’ll know you had something performed, but of course you won’t remember what. That would be counterproductive, wouldn’t it?” She gave Lena a lukewarm smile which Lena didn’t return. She didn’t feel much like smiling. The counselor looked back at her sheet. “You passed the psych screening, so now we just need you to isolate the memories you’d like us to modify. Make sure you take your time and get your story straight. I’ll give you the forms.”

Lena took the binder from the counselor with pale, cold hands. A part of her was aghast at the idea of changing her own memories–it felt like self-mutilation. She knew her parents could never find out what she’d done, however, and there was no way to lie to them with her memories intact. They’d use the serum on her, and if she remembered her wrongdoing, Lena would be forced to capitulate.

With a firm and steady hand, Lena wrote her directives and specifics into the binder, recording what would be her new memory of the last six months. “Here,” she said in only a matter of minutes. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?” the counselor asked. “That didn’t take long. Make certain you’ve written down everything we need to change.”

“It’s only one thing,” Lena said softly. “It was a miscarriage. That’s all. That’s the only thing I want different.”

The counselor regarded Lena for a moment, then nodded slowly. “All right.” She took the binder and stood, beckoning Lena towards the operating room. “Right this way.”

Palkas’ autograph line had finally dwindled to nothing. They’d capped the line two hours ago and now, at last, the final gawkers and fans were being escorted out of the building. With a sigh and a stretch, Palkas stood and worked the kinks out of his neck. Signing autographs, while less taxing than his day job, didn’t seem to make him stiffen up the same way.

The bouncers were outside, as were his escorts, and Palkas took a moment to look around the room, taking in the posters and 8×10 glossies, all depicting his grinning face. There was the Morkark asteroid field, the one they’d claimed was too dangerous for any one-man ship to successfully navigate. There was the Ressi sun flare, said to be unskimmable. There was his latest triumph, the planet Argus VII, whose heavy gravity and atmosphere had prevented even well-suited humanoids from reconnoitering its surface for seventy years. To other men this would have seemed like a list of impossibilities, but to Palkas it read like a resume. They were all behind him now. He had conquered the unconquerable.

“Mr. Palkas? Sir?”

A face peeked from behind one of the entry doors and Palkas looked up, surprised. The security personnel were supposed to be keeping people out, not letting them in–but this was a young man, couldn’t be more than twenty, and Palkas certainly didn’t feel concerned for his personal safety. “Yes? What is it, son?”

The kid moved into the room, smiling nervously. He seemed a little star-struck. “Ah, I know I’m late–sorry about that–but I was wondering, um, if I could have your autograph? It’s for my sister,” he added quickly. “She’s your biggest fan.”

Palkas sighed. The bouncers definitely should have picked this one up before he got this far, but what the hell. The room was quiet, and he couldn’t head back to the hotel until the security men got back, anyway. “Sure,” he said, taking out a pen and pulling over the poster that the kid proffered. When given the name in a trembling voice, he signed in flowing script. “Here you are. Hope she enjoys it.”

“Thank you, sir. I know she will, sir.” The kid was beside himself. He gazed at all the posters with starry-eyed awe. “It’s amazing that one man could do what you’ve done, Mr. Palkas. All of the amazing feats that you’ve accomplished… there’s nothing left in this galaxy that man hasn’t been able to do. It’s a real treat to meet you. A real treat.”

Palkas smiled indulgently. He liked this kid. “No problem, son. The pleasure’s mine.”

The kid nodded and bobbed his head, moving towards the door. When he got there, he stopped and turned. “Just one more question, please? Mr. Palkas?”

Well, he had time, Palkas reasoned. One question was no big deal. “Sure, kid. What’s on your mind?”

“What are you going to do now?”

Jergan loved ships. Ever since he was a little mite he’d loved them, watched them, lusted over them–it was only natural that he become a pilot. He’d been a dock worker for years as a teenager, hauling and stacking crates, recalibrating spanners, and bugging any captains he could get a word with to take him into their crew. It never happened, of course. Everyone knew Jergan around the loading docks, knew that he cared more about the ships than about their cargo or crew. That was bad for business. Jergan was patient, though, and when he turned twenty-two he had finally made enough money to purchase his own ship.

Now it seemed like he might have to go back to hauling crates. Only a light-year from Borsen, Jergan’s baby had developed a shimmy, and halfway into the outer atmosphere sans attitude control, he was beginning to accept that it might be a lost cause. “I knew it would happen sometime,” Jergen said to his placidly plummeting ship, “But Borsa? Sweetheart, I thought I taught you class.” The ship wasn’t answering. Jergan went through the repair procedures a final time, but there was nothing to be done. The ship seemed determined to go to her death.

Jergan stood in the central cabin, one hand on the bulkhead. He’d raised this ship from a junkyard brat into a respectable salvage vehicle, but here she was, resigned to a fiery end. The atmosphere was beginning to redden outside the windows, and Jergan knew she wouldn’t last much longer. This was the moment all the captains had dreaded. This was the time when he’d have to choose.

“Well, babe, it’s been fun,” he said, moving to the hatch and fitting himself with an oxygen helmet. “You’re a beauty. I woulda loved you to the end. But I’m not gonna go down with you.” With a final pat, he moved through the hatch into the escape pod and jettisoned. Watching the ship explode as it careened into the atmosphere brought a pang to Jergan’s heart.

When he finally dragged himself into a port in Borsa, Jergan’s very first stop was the bar. He’d only gotten halfway through his third beer, however, when a tap on the shoulder brought him around. A man with hard eyes was peering down at him.

“Yeah?” Jergan slurred. “Whaddaya want?”

“You’re Jergan,” the man said. “Ship-lover who couldn’t get a job in Delwas, right? Went down over the Crater today?”

Jergan grunted and slumped over his beer. “Kinda busy right now, man,” he muttered. “Wanna take a hike?”

“Wanna take a hike, captain.”

Jergan turned his head and eyed the man in confusion.

“Captain Hennesey,” the man clarified. “It seems you’re out of work, and we’re a man short.”

Jergan blinked. “But… Delwas. I thought you said…”

Hennesey waved a dismissive hand. “If you want work, you’re hired,” he said simply. He glanced at Jergan’s beer and smirked, just a little. “We could use a pragmatist like you.”

Rage. It was burning, fiery, coursing, singing like a hurricane through wind-bent trees and thundering like a tsunami. He felt his teeth clench and grind, his eyes widen, his nails cutting two crescents of half-moon wounds into his palms. His thoughts cascaded together, mind like an avalanche. He couldn’t see straight. Everything seemed covered in a veil of red. Until now he’d thought that was just a cliché. Anger consumed him, roaring through him, and Harry rode it until it finally died away. When the tide ebbed he was left gasping, fists clenching and unclenching within the protective restraints, grasping for more.

“How was that one?” Leroy asked, his voice hushed and mouth grinning as he leaned in over Harry. “Good shit? You were tripping balls, man.”

Harry only had the strength to nod. “That’s the stuff,” he said when he had enough breath. “Grade-A. We can get a half-mil a pop, easy. God damn.” He craned his neck forward to wipe his forehead on the top of his sleeve, wriggling in the safety chair. “What’s next?”

“You’ll like this one,” Leroy said, already loading up the needle. “You can’t get this shit anymore. It’s been bred out, treated before we even know we have it by all that shit the government pumps into the water. This’ll sell for sure.”

“Well what is it?” Harry asked, squirming in the chair, trying to read the label on the bottle.

Leroy smirked. “Sadness.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open and he leaned back, arm twitching with anticipation as Leroy shot him up. He let his eyes roll back into his head as he waited for the drug take effect. It happened all at once; the chemicals reached the nerve endings in the brain, and suddenly the world dropped away, replaced by a gaping void of hopelessness and despair. Harry experienced a true and complete sensation of worthlessness.

He had never known such bliss.

“It’s just a brain game,” Aaron assured the dubious Thomas. He grinned, a sly smirk that made his half-lidded eyes seem like they knew something Thomas didn’t. Thomas had always hated that.

“It messes with people’s heads,” Thomas insisted, stubborn. “You’re not even allowed to have them here.”

“They sell them on Mars,” Aaron retorted with a derisive sniff. “Right on the street.”

“News flash. We aren’t on Mars.” Thomas’ frown was getting more sulky, bordering on a pout. “You should just get rid of that thing. If somebody catches you with it, you’re gonna be in trouble.”

“Ah, it’s no big deal.” Aaron played with the small device in his hand, turning it over and over, his smile widening just a little. One finger flicked over the sensitive control strip. “Let’s take it down to the docks and give it a try.”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but paused in the middle, a look of vague confusion washing over his face. He was aware of a faint humming sound, more felt than heard, and lost the thread of conversation for a moment while he tried to pinpoint it. Aaron watched for a few moments, then tapped Thomas lightly on the head with a pen, using the hand that wasn’t holding the brain game.

“Hey. Thomas. Let’s go down to the docks and give it a try,” he repeated, watching closely.

“Sure,” Thomas said easily, turning back to Aaron and giving a lopsided grin. “Sounds like fun.”

“Silver hair is in this season,” the technician suggested helpfully. Mary made a face.

“Won’t that just make me look old?”

“No, no,” the technician assured Mary with a laugh. “It’s silver, dear, not white. Definitely unnatural,” she added. Mary signed and fingered the swatches. Silver wasn’t exactly what she was going for.

“How about blue?” Mary asked, flipping to a new ring of swatches. “I’ve always liked blue hair. Why don’t more people have that?”

The technician pursed her lips and shook her head, eyes skimming the computer screen in front of her. “Blue is very hard to get,” she explained. “Your genetic makeup wouldn’t allow for it.”

Mary pouted and the technician moved the swatch ring aside, bringing out a thick book instead. “What about eyes?” the woman asked. “Eyes are very popular too, and there’s so much you can do with them. And unlike the hair, the change will take place within an hour. You don’t have to wait for it to grow in.”

Mary perked up at that, flipping through the book with growing interest. There were so many choices, and the procedure price was about the same as the hair. Still, she had some doubts.

“Is it safe?” Mary asked, eyeing the technician dubiously. “I mean, a bad hair job is one thing, but if there’s an accident during the eye procedure, couldn’t I lose my sight?”

The technician laughed indulgently, shaking her head. “Oh, dear, no. The radiation isn’t applied directly to your eyes.” She smiled. “All of our procedures are perfectly safe. The doctors have isolated the genes that produce eye and hair color, and they only need a control cell to instruct your body to change the pigmentation. The radiation will be applied at the base of your spine, just like the hair changes.”

Mary’s smile was bright and sunny as she looked at the book again, this time with a purpose in mind. “And I can have any of these?” she asked, mesmerized by the reds and golds, greens and purples and shades of orange.

“Sweetheart,” the technician said with a grin, knowing she’d just made a sale, “You can have any one you want.”

“Any one?” Mary asked, casting the technician a sly, sideways look. The woman faltered. “I… well, I can go check…”

When Mary left the clinic late that night, her eyes were seven different colors.

There had been another coup, but that didn’t matter to Alba. All Governmentalists were alike; so what if they exchanged one secretary for another? The anarchist papers were cheering over the shift, but Alba knew better. If the “coup” had reached the newspapers, it was little more than a PR stunt. Alba wasn’t a cynic. She was just a realist, and in the City, it amounted to the same thing.

In college, Alba had been a rebel, but it wasn’t until she left the school system that she discovered how the world really worked. In her last year she’d become enamored of a journalist, a vibrant, sexy woman named Medina. Medina had convinced her to take a year off, to explore the slums that Alba had never seen. Medina was writing a story, a daring exposé of the darker life, and Alba was caught up in the thrill.

They traveled together for three months, hitching rides on the back rail of subway cars and thumbing lifts from off-duty taxis. Alba had never seen the lives of the poor, the wage slavery sycophants who believed every word of the Governmentalist propaganda and spent their precious hours of freedom reading tabloids about the lives of the rich and influential.

It was in one of a long line of cheap hotel rooms, when Medina was sated and sleeping in their broken-springed bed, when Alba picked up the digitizer to read Medina’s half-written report by the light of the neon signs outside.

“Dee. Dee, what is this?” Alba reached out and shook Medina’s shoulder, sharply recalling her to the waking world. The dark-eyed woman blinked sleepily.

“It’s my report. You should know that. I only work on it every night. Come back to bed,” Medina breathed, tugging lightly on Alba’s arm.

“Your report… this can’t be your report.” Alba ignored the touch, her eyes still fixed on the digitizer. “There’s nothing in here about the things we did or the people we saw. This is all… Dee, this reads like Governmentalist propaganda!”

Medina sat up and tapped one of the buttons on the digitizer. A new document came up, this one filled with names and addresses and detailed notes on the disaffected people they’d visited.

“That part’s already been sent to the recording bureau,” Medina explained with a secretive, playful smile. She chuckled and moved closer to Alba, slipping an arm around the younger woman’s slim waist. “I had no idea you were such an idealist.”

“What are you talking about?” Alba pushed Medina away. “I’m no patriot. Are you telling me you sent all this away to the government? Do you have any idea what they’re going to do with this information? Weren’t you listening to the people we met?”

“They’ll take care of it,” Medina said soothingly.

“Take care of it! You mean they’ll arrest them for dissension! Dee, these people spoke to us in confidence. You’re a journalist. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Medina stared at Alba for a moment, then looked down and shook her head, smirking. “You’re so naïve.” She leaned back, stretching like a cat. “Journalism doesn’t exist in the City. It’s impossible, even if someone was foolish enough to try. Even the anti-government newsletters are screened.” She gazed out the window, a look of proprietary fondness in her eyes. “I don’t do this because I’m some sort of idealist or rebel. I’d be fired in less than a day. I do it to keep myself fed—and maybe get a few thrills in the process.” She looked back at Alba and grinned wickedly. “That’s how you play the game.”

“You’re turning people in to die.” Alba’s voice was flat, and she wasn’t smiling. Medina sighed.

“Is that any different from what the anarchists do? I’m letting the government know when someone’s working against the state. What they do with that knowledge isn’t my problem. Anarchists kill people with their own hands—innocent people, government clerks and flunkies who’ve never touched a gun in their lives—and they call it ‘liberating their souls for freedom.’ If anything’s wrong about our City, that’s it.”

Alba didn’t answer, and eventually Medina sighed and rolled over, falling back asleep. Alba read the entire report, all the data collected, all the names. Then she reformatted the drive. She gathered her clothes, stuffed her things into her worn duffel bag, and picked up the digitizer again. In a new document, she typed the words, THIS IS HOW I PLAY THE GAME.

Six months later, when she was the leader of her own rebel cell, Medina was the first soul Alba liberated in the fight for freedom.

“How’s it going, Cody? Got another level yet?” Miss Katrina knelt down next to Cody’s desk and peered over his shoulder at the game displayed on the screen. Cody looked up at her and grinned without pausing.

“I’m almost level 28!” he declared. “I finally got past that mountain with the pterodactyls and the squid.”

“Oh, yeah?” Miss Katrina made a note in her teacher’s book and smiled at Cody. “How’d you make it?”

“Turned out it was easy,” Cody admitted with a sheepish grin. “I just had to subtract to find their pattern integer, and then when I was jumping I put in the answers and timed it just right! I was adding before,” he admitted, “but I get it now.” He gave Miss Katrina a sunny smile and then glued his eyes back on the video game screen, where the digital Cody was asking NPCs for their opinions on the fall of Russian democracy so that he could properly advise his NPC feudal lord and thereby complete a quest.

“That’s good to hear! You’re going to be up to 30 in no time,” Miss Katrina praised Cody, making notations and circling his progress in red. Cody had come a long way, and when she punched up the game readout, it indicated his grades were up to high Bs and low As in areas where he’d only been scraping by before. It seemed he’d finally gotten the hang of the interface.

“You bet,” Cody agreed, his eyes now focused entirely on the screen as his lips moved, memorizing and synthesizing data.

“Good work,” Miss Katrina told her student, and moved on to the next. This was one Darrell Sumpter, whose experience point gain had been lagging lately, but Miss Katrina was sure that with the proper mentoring he’d be the same level as his peers in no time.

“I got it!” Dave cried, exuberant, brandishing a cheap plastic comb as he burst into the dorm room. “Jake! I finally got it!”

Jake looked up from his fuel cell textbook and eyed Dave, unimpressed. “So your hair will finally stop looking like a rat’s next. Great. The world will rejoice.” He didn’t budge from his reclining position on his bed.

“No, you numbskull, not the comb. It’s what’s on the comb,” Dave corrected. He brought it over to his desk and fumbled in the top drawer for tweezers and a small Ziploc bag, still holding the comb carefully, almost reverently, between thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t get it,” Jake said flatly, watching Dave’s antics only because they were slightly more entertaining than his homework.

“The hair on the comb,” Dave elaborated, holding the plastic piece up to the light while he carefully tweezed a single strand of gold from between the comb’s tines, then sealed it up in the plastic bag.

Jake sat up, frowning, and let his textbook fall back against his chest. “Whose hair is it?”

“Arnold’s,” Dave answered, his lit-up eyes never leaving the bag. “It took a while, but I finally got it. Now I can go to that place in the Slats and give this fucker what he deserves.”

“You mean the revenge business?” Jake’s attention was how fully focused on Dave. “I thought you were joking about that.”

“No way. I told you, I’ve been saving up for this for month.”

Jake watched Dave gloat over the hair with a growing sense of unease. “Why don’t you just commission a hologram?” he asked. “Hell of a lot faster, and cheaper, too.”

“I did that last year. It’s worthless. Holograms don’t have bones to break.” Dave began searching his desk for an envelope and pen.

Jake flinched, though he knew Dave was too distracted to notice, and a few seconds passed before he could form his reply. “By the time they finish growing that thing, you won’t give a shit about Arnold anymore, so what’s the point?”

“Shows what you know. They’ve got speed vats now. If I put in my order today, I can have him in two weeks.” Dave labeled the envelope, then slid the plastic bag in and sealed it tight.

“That’s illegal.”

“Is not. They’ve got all the documentation at the lab. It’s legal as long as you grow the clone without a functional brain stem. Here—” Dave rummaged through the papers on his desk and tossed a glossy brochure onto the bed next to Jake. “Read it yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Jake didn’t move. He stayed silent for several minutes as Dave pulled out a stack of forms and began filling in information. At last, Jake looked up at Dave’s back and asked, “So… what are you going to do with it once they grow it?”

“Well, you only get one hour,” Dave replied without turning around. “I haven’t decided exactly…” Jake could see Dave’s eyes narrow in profile as his roommate’s hand clenched on the pen. “But he’s going to be sorry he ever thought about touching Julia.” The bitterness in Dave’s voice sent a shiver down Jake’s spine.

“How can it be sorry without a functional brainstem?” Jake asked, his voice oddly thick.

“Oh, well he can’t, of course,” Dave said with an embarrassed laugh. He turned to face Jake for the first time since he’d come in and flashed a sheepish grin. “But close enough, right?”

Jake didn’t answer, and after a moment Dave turned back to the desk. “Well, I’m gonna go put my order in. Wish me luck.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he left, which was fortuitous because Jake didn’t have one.

In the wake of Dave’s departure, the rushing in Jake’s ears seemed even louder. He stared at the brochure for several minutes without touching it. At last he stood up, letting the fuel cell textbook fall harmlessly on the bed, and moved over to open the window. For a few moments he stood still, breathing in the chill. Then he picked up the small comb from his dresser and threw it out the window as hard as he possibly could.

“You’re being irrational.”

“I know.” Sandra’s grey-green eyes matched the sight below her, mesmerized by the crashing of waves against one of the few beaches left in the world. She didn’t look away, not even to meet the irritated gaze of her husband across the restaurant table. “But doesn’t it get to you, too? It’s so… huge.”

Mark rolled his eyes and took his annoyance out on a dinner roll that didn’t really deserve it. “Sandy, do you have any idea how much I paid for this view? The least you could do is try to enjoy it-or tolerate it, for the sake of our anniversary.”

“I told you I was afraid of water.” Sandra didn’t look up. The ocean was far below them, but she could still see the waves, reckless and unconstrained by the neat, sanitary conveniences of human life. Once there had been many oceans, covering the majority of the planet’s surface. Now most of that had dried up, which in Sandra’s eyes made life tolerable-but this one still persisted, and here she was confronted with it. She couldn’t look away.

“I didn’t think you were this serious,” Mark muttered, putting the maligned roll aside on a china plate. “I mean-” He picked up his glass of purified, recycled table-water, the highest quality. “Look at this.” He waved it in her face. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

Sandra finally glanced up, then frowned and flinched away from the glass. “No, not as much,” she conceded. “But that’s different. The ocean…” Her eyes strayed to the window again, caught in the billowing waves. “It’s so huge. So… violent. People used to die at sea, you know.”

“Sure, in the dark ages,” Mark scoffed. “And it’s not huge. It’s miniscule; barely a tenth of what it was when our great grandparents were around.” He pulled out his cellphone. “I can punch it up on satellite and prove it.”

“No-Mark, it’s okay.” Sandra sighed and tore her eyes away from the ocean view. “I’m sorry. Let’s just enjoy our meal.” She smiled wanly at her husband, who finally put away the cellphone, though not without much grumbling.

Throughout dinner, Sandra was careful not to look out the window. But she could feel it, crashing silently just outside her vision, a malignant and uncontrollable force-perhaps the last uncontrollable force that the world held. Sandra kept her eyes on her plate, but when she and Mark finally left the restaurant, her expensive glass of water remained untouched.

“Iljek, it’s time for another piece.”

The Interplanetary Artist Laureate, holder of the Sigil of Creativity, founder of the Union of Visionary Crafters, chair of the Board of Humanities at Reykjavik University of the Arts, leaned back in his lounge chair and put his porn on mute, giving his assistant a long-suffering sigh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Elarii bit her lip and tried to hold Iljek’s upside-down gaze without letting stress get the better of her. Breathe. Breathe. That was what her therapist had told her. Deep, calming breaths. Elarii took a quick sniff of oxygen from the decorative tube affixed to her robes at the shoulder. Calming breaths. “No, Iljek, I’m not. It’s been almost four months since you produced any new art.”

Iljek snorted and glanced back at the holo-dish projecting his entertainment. “So the creative spirit hasn’t hit me yet. Tell the papers I’m sequestered in meditation or whatever.”

“That’s what we told them last month,” Elarii told Iljek, reaching down to surreptitiously turn off the alarm on her blood pressure meter. “Last time it was three months. We can’t just keep stringing them along without anything to show for it. You need product.”

Iljek sighed and sat up in his chair, scratching his head with one hand and his balls with the other. Elarii had been on him for several weeks about this, but the tone in her voice told him she was getting desperate, and that meant it really was time for him to earn his keep. “All right. Bring me a recorder.”

Relief thrumming through her body, Elarii came around to the front of the chair and set down the silver cube she’d had prepared for the last two months. Hesitant to do anything that might break the fitful spell of productivity, she didn’t speak, just turned on the device and backed away. Iljek held out his hand and she pressed a baton into it, the sophisticated tool that would tell the three-dimensional recorder what to paint in the air in response to Iljek’s creative vision.

Standing slowly, Iljek faced the recorder. He was silent for several moments, and the hush over the room was only accented by the soundless ecstasy of the porn star writhing doggie-style in front of the dish. Elarii stayed absolutely still. She wasn’t worried about disturbing Iljek’s ‘creative process,’ but if he got distracted, there might never be anything to show for this brief moment of responsibility.

Suddenly, Iljek’s hand shot out, and a splash of colour appeared in the air in response to the movement and angle of the baton. A quick twist and the shape took on a metallic sheen. With gyrations almost as complicated and random as the image itself, Iljek soon produced a visual cacophony that closely resembled the regurgitated spleen of a Geritenal llama. The artist grinned and stuck the baton into an empty beer can, chucking the contraption through the recording area with a final flourish, creating a puce-gold splotch through the center of the image. “There,” he said triumphantly, putting his hands on his hips and then flopping back into his chair. “How d’ya like that, huh?”

Elarii smiled with pure relief. “It’s perfect, Iljek. True creative vision.” She moved forward and carefully disentangled the baton, turning it off and setting the recorder to freeze.

Iljek grinned like a madman and resettled his underwear over his skinny artist’s stomach. “Now where’s the remote…? Ah, thanks.” He took the device as Elarii offered it and hit the dish back on, settling in with a happy sigh.

Elarii shook her head and carried the recorder away, leaving Iljek to his holo-women and ‘creative juices.’ She locked herself in her office, a room used only once every few months–if she was lucky–and placed the recorder on her desk. When she pressed the button, Iljek’s creation sprang to life, in all its three-dimensional glory. Elarii frowned at it for a few moments, deeply considering the swirls and splotches arrayed chaotically across the canvas of air. Everything was still.

At last, her eyes brightened, and Elarii picked up a stylus and turned on her computer monitor. Across the top of her screen, she scrawled Inverted Innocence–the suffering of the Ternean meteor disaster. Sinking back in her desk chair, Elarii smirked. This one would be easy; the art institutions of the galaxy would have her heart-wrenching interpretation of Iljek’s scribbles within the next forty-eight hours. She’d have to clear her schedule to accommodate the coming lecture circuit.

Stylus in hand, Elarii bent over her tablet, scribbling away. Now the real art could begin.

For a successful space pirate, Valentine Arvossio did not seem particularly intimidating at first glance. His eyes, though smug, were a rather peculiar shade of grey that in another context might have been referred to as “soothing.” It was the sort of grey that one used for office complexes and prison lavatories to keep the inmates subdued. His wiry frame was somewhat lacking in the “mighty thews” department, and his crew had mentioned to him on at least three nonconsecutive occasions that the long, flowing red hair was less “pirate” and more “dilettante.” Valentine ignored these complaints.

On the rare occasions when he could be persuaded to comment on his intimidation factor, Valentine insisted that anyone who was named after a type of gun could be nothing less than fearsome. If pressed, he might be magnanimous enough to tell the story of his conception, which occurred shortly after his mother shot his father with a Valentine .45 SXG handgun–precisely the same gun that Valentine kept strapped to his hip waking and sleeping. He claimed that he planned to find true love in the same way his mother had. It was a fantastic story, and all came away from the telling convinced of this fact, if not of the tale’s veracity.

Valentine had most recently related it to his latest mark, a mild-mannered engineer who owned a ship that Valentine would dearly love to get his hands on. The ship itself wasn’t much—without an engineer like Claude on board to give her tender, loving care, the thing wouldn’t make it through hyperspace, let alone a battle—but on board was something Valentine coveted. Bounty on empathic species was high, and the pirate had no doubt that such a creature would sell for even higher on the black market. His informants had managed to locate one of them on board Claude’s ship, and Valentine was not about to let a jewel like that get away. The fact that Claude also happened to be the most delectable morsel that Valentine had set eyes on in some time was naturally beside the point.

Unfortunately, at their last meeting, Claude had been far too miserable to fully appreciate the intimidation Valentine intended to work upon him. The morose engineer had been hunched over Retichken vodka in a bar that Valentine happened to frequent, and once he’d gotten over his shock, the pirate had swooped in—to no avail. In his semi-drunken state, Claude had found the story “romantic” and “heartwarming” and had thanked Valentine with a drunken pat on the back that the latter had been too stunned to enjoy. As he reclined in the central chair on his own ship’s bridge, the pirate’s full lips curled into a frown that came off as more of a pout. He was still cursing himself for letting Claude get away that night, in every sense of the word. At the very least, it had been highly unprofessional.

For the three days since his unexpected contact with the engineer, Valentine’s crew had been scouring space for the plucky little ship to no avail. His bridge officers had made themselves scarce, knowing that it was best to stay out of the captain’s way when his will had been thwarted. For all Claude’s drunken amiability, he was a top-notch engineer, and had somehow managed to elude even Valentine’s sophisticated tracking methods. After punching up a series of patiently blank scan screens, Valentine heaved a sigh and pushed his display away. At this rate, he wouldn’t find Claude again until the man once again decided he was in need of a drink. His first officer had sarcastically suggested to the pirate captain that next time he encountered Claude, he should use his ‘manly wiles’ on the quarry. Valentine had dismissed her in annoyance. “Next time,” he muttered to himself, “I’ll just drug the booze.”

There is nothing to burn. Modern life is plasticine, cheap and mutable and easily manufactured. Wooden furniture is the stuff of history textbooks and Better Homes and Gardens pinups, the pictures affixed to smooth synthetic walls with reused sticky-tack. Pinup is a misnomer; pins have no purchase in plastic.

The poor live in dingy cubes of space stacked on top of each other like ice cube trays, twelve stories high even in the slums. Oil is a thing of the past, hoarded by the elite and unheard of by the ordinary. Coal is a fiction in the lower city, a dream that children are chided for to protect them from the inevitable disappointment. There is nothing to burn. Even the telephone poles are polyurethane. Snow is praised as an insulator in the country, building up over low, squat houses and keeping their residents alive for as long as they’ve stockpiled food, but here in the city there is no such thing as snow. The heat of humanity melts it before it ever hits the ground.

Winter is the new population control, and the means of survival serve a double purpose. There is nothing to burn, so they burn their own, the stiff frozen twists of the unfortunate packed into thermoset stoves and lit with the dried dead fur of a squirrel or mouse. The vinyl clothing is carefully cut away before lighting the inferno, melted down by the heat of its previous owner and reused for the survivors. Bodies never rot. They are too valuable to be left so long.

Thick black smoke spews from the dingy acrylic chimneys, blanketing the slums in a charnel haze. Poor workers plod through the streets with heads down, trying not to breathe in their brethren. There is nothing to burn. They no longer notice the smell.

Innocence may be a commodity, but it’s easily emulatable. I get it in thin aluminum cans from the drugstore downtown, the kind that energy drinks come in. They’re kept behind the counter; innocence isn’t a controlled substance, but like condoms and suppositories, it’s kept out of reach to deter the easily embarrassed. Our society needs a moral compass, after all.

Me, I take pride in asking for a can. I keep my eyes languid and my tone casual, and I watch with a slightly widening smirk as the clerk’s smile fades to uncomfortability. I make no effort to hide it from the people in line. They’re all silent, watching me with individually tailored levels of outrage or disgust.

The clerk rings me up with thin lips, thanking me tonelessly for the purchase and handing me my plastic bag. As I leave, he wonders what kind of person would need to purchase innocence. He imagines what I’m trying to hide. He worries that this town isn’t safe with me in it. He wonders if I’m using it on a date with his daughter tonight.

The rosy Martian sunrise had just dusted over the white curtains on Beth’s bedroom window when her parents heard the wild thudding of eight-year-old feet charging their door like a herd of wild horses. Marlene groaned and stuck her head under the pillow as a small fist tapped earnestly on the sleek plastic of the door. “Greg, it’s five in the morning. Can’t you tell her to wait a little longer?” But her husband was already dragging himself out of bed. Marlene groaned. Beth had always been a daddy’s girl.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” came the voice from outside, and Marlene forced herself to sit up, rubbing her eyes. Gregory pressed the blue button that would unlock the door and was immediately assaulted by a small, brown-haired bundle in a white nightgown. “Daddy!” Beth cried out gleefully, launching herself at her father’s pajamaed legs. “It’s my birthday!”

“I know it is, Beth sweetie,” Gregory said, casting a helpless look at his wife. Marlene couldn’t help but smirk as she took her time getting out of bed, leaving Gregory to deal with their offspring. He leaned down and hopped the child up into his arms, and Beth squealed with delight. Gregory grinned and tickled her stomach. “Is my big girl ready for her present?”

“Present!” Beth crowed, flinging her arms around her father’s neck. “Can I have it now?”

“Ask your mother,” Gregory replied, his lips quirking with amusement.

“Can I have my present now, Mommy?” The girl turned immediately to Marlene, squirming in her father’s arms to face her mother completely. “Pleeeeease?”

“If you want it, you’d better run downstairs quick before the little green men show up and take it away!” Marlene laughed as Beth squealed and squiggled out of her father’s arms to pelt back down the hallway and thunder down to the living room. Gregory shook his head, and Marlene smirked. “Mother’s instinct,” she replied to his unspoken question, then plucked her silk robe from the closet and patted her husband’s shoulder. “You’d better go down there and give your daughter her birthday gift.”

Gregory kissed her and disappeared downstairs, and Marlene took her time finding her slippers and tying her robe. It was only when she heard a child’s shriek from downstairs that Marlene dropped her hairbrush and rushed to the sound. In the living room, Beth was clinging to her father’s shirt, face buried in Gregory’s chest, while a placid creature with large blue camera-eyes and sleek white plastic hide looked on.

“Beth, what is it?” Gregory was clearly distressed. “You kept saying you wanted a pony for your birthday! Daddy got you a pony, sweetie… what’s the matter?”

“It’s not a pony!” the eight-year-old wailed, casting a look of mingled fear and reproach at the silent android. “It’s a robot! It’s not a… not a real pony!”

Marlene bit her lip and knelt on the floor. “Beth, you know we can’t have a real pony on Mars. Daddy and I thought you would like this one…”

“But Daddy’s the con-soo-late!” Beth protested, emphasizing the word she’d heard time and again to describe what, to her, was simply a Very Important Job.

“Even the consulate can’t break the law, Beth,” Gregory reminded his daughter, looking helplessly to Marlene for guidance.

“I don’t want it!” Beth cried out, shaking her head and burying it in Gregory’s shirt again.

“Look, Beth honey,” Marlene said, trying to coax her child to face her. “It’s a good pony—better than a real one. You can ride it and play with it and even polish it if you want. You get to pick the name, too.”

“No, no, no!” Beth shook her head emphatically with each negation, her little fists balled up in Gregory’s shirt for emphasis. Gregory looked at his wife, entirely at a loss. Marlene pressed her lips together.

“Beth, would you like the pony if we got him a hover attachment?”

The tears stopped. Round blue eyes peeked out at Marlene from Gregory’s shirt. “You mean… a flying pony?”

Marlene nodded solemnly. “A flying pony of your very own.”

Beth blinked at her mother, then turned to face the pony. Its luminous eyepieces gleamed back at her. Before Gregory could blink, his child’s arms were flung around the warm plastic neck as tightly as they had been around his own.

“Thank you, Daddy!” Beth smiled at her parents as brightly as if her eyes had never known tears. “He’s perfect.”

Firanel felt the first stirrings at the age of thirteen. For her, it started in her temple, a slow but pervasive ache that soon spread to her jaw. By the time she told the Elders, Firanel could barely talk, but her soft voice brought praise and exultation. She had been chosen; she would become complete. Her time of change was approaching.

In the growing months, Firanel lost her speech entirely. The thin web of metal that had sprouted on her face, glittering and spiderlike, took as its root the jawbone that had prompted her to seek the Elders when the change began. She was moved to the temple, where anointed Complete Ones saw to her needs and murmured quiet prayers under their breath when she passed. Sometimes she missed being able to talk, but the Complete Ones sensed this and assured her that her other half would provide.

Each anointed one was different, their changes manifesting in different ways. Sister Daael’s right arm was entirely composed of smooth silver metal. Brother Sikvit’s eyes had atrophied entirely, replaced by glowing ocular cameras that the other half had created in his smooth sockets. Brother Mahe had to wear altered robes to accommodate his gleaming steel prehensile tail. Firanel had doubts sometimes—they were all so devoted, so serene; how could she have been chosen to be among these worthies, to have an other half? The Complete Ones all knew her thoughts. They gave her secret smiles, and each told her that she would understand soon.

The metal spread down Firanel’s throat, growing and blossoming into a lattice that soon reached her lungs. For three weeks she was sick, moaning in her pallet, soft clicking sounds issuing from her metal-filled mouth as she moved. The Complete Ones cared for her, making cold compresses for her forehead and feeding her through soft plastic tubes. At last, her other half completed the meld with her stomach, and she was able to eat again, the food broken down and digested by the new metal parts of her body. The anointed ones congratulated her, telling her it was not long now, not long.

When her time was near, Firanel went into hibernation, the only way for her other half to complete the final changes. The anointed ones placed her in the temple and held watch for her in shifts, praying over her silent body. The metal web covered the right side of her face, whirring and glittering in the soft temple light. Its arms spread across her pale skin and into her mouth, down her neck and into it, the visible portions only a small fraction of her other half’s presence within her body. When she was ready to wake, all of the Complete Ones knew. The signal traveled on airwaves particular to the chosen, calling them together, linking them for the birth of one of their own.

Firanel was aware of the link as soon as she woke. Her smile clinked when she opened her eyes, the metal bars and threads that filled her mouth brushing together to make the sound. She sat up, gazing in wonder at her new partners, her new friends. They all turned expectantly to her, waiting, ready to experience the uniqueness of the newest Complete One.

Exultant, Firanel turned to face her brothers and sisters, gazing at their half-flesh, half-metal forms. She opened her mouth, jaw unhinging, the clicking, leglike rods of segmented metal reaching outwards, welcoming her brethren through her lips. Firanel’s throat thrummed and vibrated, and from the slick metal legs inside, her new voice emerged.

Stevie glanced over his shoulder, tiptoeing barefoot through the deepest corridors of the Barnum. The ship was huge, as ponderous and lumbering as a garbage barge, but Stevie had lived here all his life. He knew the corridors like the back of his hand—even the ones where he wasn’t allowed.

The soft glow of emergency lighting turned his skin blue as Stevie reached for the keypad on a maintenance duct, tapping in the code he’d bought off of a janitor with two chocolate bars and a cigarette. The circus moved everywhere and anywhere around the galaxy, so currency was fairly meaningless to its workers—money was pretty, Stevie had to admit, but on the Barnum, transactions were conducted through barter with trade goods. He grinned with relief when the hatch opened under his touch, sneaking in and closing it behind him. The chocolate had been worth it.

The duct was cramped, but Stevie was small, and he’d looked at enough blueprints to know which turns to take. When he finally reached the hatch he wanted on the opposite side, Stevie was grinning so hard his face hurt. He barely managed to calm himself enough to turn the handle and crank the hatch open from the inside.

His heart jumped into his throat when Stevie snuck out of the hatch, his teenage eyes darting around the cargo bay to make sure no guards were around. The glow in this room was different from the one in the hallways. The soft blue light was there, but its presence was eclipsed by the white glow that came from the opposite corner of the bay. Eyes widening, Stevie approached the force shield, his heart in his throat. When he got close enough, the angle would allow him to see through what now appeared as a frosted white pane, finally catching a glimpse of the creature inside.

Stevie had seen the gentle giant before; the enormous, alien-looking creature was extinct on its natural Earth habitat, but it was the star attraction of the circus he had performed with all his life, so Stevie had naturally seen it during the shows. No one but the handlers was allowed near, however, so all that Stevie had ever seen had been what he could catch while peeping through the wings. If he worked off his indentured status, he might someday be allowed to train for a better role in the circus, maybe even become a handler himself—but there were years of service between Stevie and freedom, and he had to know. He had to see.

All at once, the fog cleared, and Stevie could see through the force shield as if it was only air. He gasped, eyes widening, and tilted his open-mouthed face up, up, up. It was even larger than he’d imagined, this powerful mass of grey, the creature whose majesty had captivated audiences across the galaxy. Stevie reached out involuntarily but was stopped by the spark of the force shield, wincing as he took his hand back. His heart quailed when the creature moved in response, its huge head lowering to investigate the spark. It would be angry, surely it would be angry, it would trumpet the call that he had heard so many times, but this time the guards would come, and that would mean another five years… Stevie wanted to turn and run, but he was rooted to the spot, frozen before the great beast.

Silently, the grey head leaned down until one black, round eye was level with the boy’s face. Stevie held himself very still and tried not to breathe. The huge trunk rose and Stevie nearly fainted at the sight—but it didn’t attack him. It didn’t break through the wall. Instead, the soft snout pressed up against the force shield, staying there despite the sparks.

Stevie was stunned. He looked deep into the black eye and suddenly, the fear was gone. Stevie reached out and pressed his hand against the shield, ignoring the shock of the energy sparks. Despite the inch of clear space between them, he almost felt the soft wet touch of the elephant’s nose.

Chuck surveyed the landing pad with a nod, his proprietary self-satisfied grin encompassing all he could see. It felt good, he reflected, to be a champion of the most powerful force in the universe: awesome.

Chuck was a Space Ranger and proud of it. They weren’t universally liked, but then, awesome never was. The Space Rangers were loners, a band held together only loosely by the bonds of a common purpose: liberating the innocent from the clutches of the bad guys. From system to system, their mission was the same, despite the vast difference in the ships they flew, the methods they used, and the caliber of laser pistol they employed—the only difficult conundrum was that Space Rangers tended to disagree on the definitions of “innocents” and “bad guys.”

Luckily for Chuck’s peace of mind, no matter what your definition was, there was no way to deny that this mission had been purely awesome. His own definition of “bad guys” included anything non-humanoid, mostly because their bodies tended to crumple and fold entertainingly when sent flying by Chuck’s ancient martial arts techniques. Fighting aliens always made for an awesome show.

With a last tug on his genuine, imported, one-hundred-percent lung-killing Marlboro Red Octane, Chuck tossed the cigarette aside and ground the flame away in the alien soil. It felt good to know that no bug-eyed monsters or creatures with more legs than brains would be terrorizing the good, elongated but still humanoid Drampuuls. The planet was now in the hands of people who had hands, and in the mind of Space Ranger Chuck, that was a thoroughly awesome feeling.

“Here’s to a job well done,” he said, lifting his flask to toast the binary sunset. The Arnorian whiskey inside of it had been a gift of thanks from the leaders of the last world he’d liberated, and Chuck thought it was only fitting that he enjoy it in the wake of another great battle. Corking the flask again, Chuck raised his hand to the horizon in a cocky salute. Then he pulled his wide-brimmed hat down low over his eyes, bowing his head as he made his way back to his ship. A Space Ranger’s work was never done.

Venusians do not worry about being on time, and I think I know why. It’s the fog—the dense fog that permeates the atmosphere and keeps visibility so low. Every terraformed planet has its quirks, and this is ours: though the poisonous gases have been removed, the fog is still here, and it follows us wherever we go. Travel is always problematic on Venus, no matter how many new sensor techniques are developed, and it is accepted that a meeting will take at least an hour to start. That’s how the tea ceremony developed. I hear it came from one of the immigrant cultures back when the planet was first colonized, but it’s different now, a ceremony of waiting. We’ve evolved.

The fog is everywhere, no matter what time of day or night, and though it does lighten during the hours when the sun hits us, it never breaks. A life on Venus is a life of isolation. We don’t need to be told not to talk to strangers; we are not inclined. Movement through the fog is like stepping into one’s own world, secret and secluded from everyone else on the planet, and the presence of others is an intrusion rather than a blessing. It is impolite to cross paths with someone on the street, and if a Venusian should be so crass as to do so, it is expected that he ignore you in order to preserve the sense of privacy.

For some time, the leading social problem on Venus was the declining birthrate, brought on not by sterility but by disinclination. We are not interested in meeting others. The family is the core of Venusian life, and we stick to it, preferring our own brightly lit homes and the familiar faces of parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins to the grey mists of the outside world. A century ago the government was forced to issue a mandate that all young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-nine would meet at city-sponsored social gatherings in order to increase matchmaking potential. Though it was met with resentment at first, we all knew it was necessary. Mutations and inbreeding were not a problem that could be ignored.

Families are still large and close, but the government now subsidizes housing for couples who want to move out of their families’ homes, even providing space for those family members who cannot bear to be left behind. Our old practices have become deep taboos, so much so that even twins can no longer share the same cradle without becoming the subject of hushed whispers and aghast looks. I am twenty-seven years old, and I know that soon I’ll have to choose. Unspoken custom dictates that we select our lifemates by twenty-five, so I am already an outlier, but Venus—Venus is in my blood.

Earth natives say they find the fog depressing, even malevolent, and will spend as little time here as they can manage. I embrace the fog. It is cool and smooth, not suffocating but comforting. It envelops me and preserves my privacy. Behind the curtain of fog, I can lie in my cousin’s arms without fear of persecution. The family knows—there is no way to keep secrets, not from family—but like strangers on the street, they turn their eyes away, ignoring what they know they are not supposed to see. What is done within the fog of Venus is not meant to be known, but every so often I will catch the eyes of my family and see the hidden glimmer of approval. They know that the old traditions are still alive.

“It’s not that you’re boring,” John protested, even though it was. He hated conversations like this, and they always seemed to happen to him. This was his third uncomfortable breakup in as many months.

“Then what is it?” Lila demanded, her pout twitching on the edge between anger and tears. John sighed. He’d seen this one before.

“I just, well, I’ve got other things to worry about in my life, you know?” John turned his head away and fiddled with the miniature joystick on his day planner. He’d had a portable version of Exatz World IV custom-installed so that he could play it while waiting for the train to work. Lila slapped his hand away.

“You mean like that game? Don’t touch that thing when you’re around me, Jonathan! I mean it!” Lila’s eyes were sparking and her pout increased, screwing up her face in a most unattractive manner. “Is that what this is all about? Did you meet some girl online? Are you cheating on me?”

“No!” John protested in exasperation. “You can’t cheat on somebody with a video game, damn it! They just have much better writers than whoever came up with your life.”

“What do you mean, writers?” Lila was aghast. “John, this is real life. There are no writers! There is no script! Get your head out of the clouds!”

“I’m sick of real life, okay?” John snapped, sitting up from his customary slouch and glaring at Lila. “Nothing changes! All the girls are the same, all the places are the same, all the stuff that happens is boring and predictable. It’s all sugar and no spice. There’s no… no… conflict! No heroism! You can’t be a man in real life!”

“John, you are really starting to scare me. Are you even listening to yourself?” Lila stared at John as if he’d grown two heads. “That ‘sugar’ is called peace! The world finally gets itself into some sense of order and you’re complaining?” She threw up her hands in disgust. “You are the most disrespectful man I’ve ever known. What would your father say if he could hear you now?”

“At least my father was a man!” John snapped. “He got to fight for what he believed in. He had a hero’s death.”

“What he believed in was a peaceful world for his son. You’re disgraceful.”

“Get out of here!” John grabbed a cushion from the couch behind him and threw it angrily in Lila’s direction. He had had enough. Everything she said was exactly what he’d predicted. It was a good thing this wasn’t a script, because John would have marched right up to the writers and given them a piece of his mind.

Lila gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. “Your father would be ashamed of you,” she said, voice trembling, then turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her. John sighed. In all honesty, he was relieved that she was gone.

Turning to his console, John sank back into his comfortable, slouched position with a groan of contentment. It only took a single keystroke to call up the world of heroes and villains, of struggles and escapes and creativity. It was easier than breathing to slough off the peace that his father had fought for in the war to end all wars. As he fitted his goggles over his eyes, John prepared to lose himself in an earlier time.

TO: Major-General Peter Wixtreed
FROM: Colonel Todd Fuller
RE: Continuing contact with Species #7652-28D

As suggested, sir, we pressed for visual contact and after some time the diplomatic envoys gave in, though not without a good deal of trepidation. They seem uncomfortable dealing with military personnel, so I reduced our contact with the envoys to a minimum and instead allowed the ambassador to speak to them directly. Her conversations seemed to persuade the envoys and put them more at ease, and when they at last capitulated, they extended the condition that she be the one to make such contact, alone. It took three hours more to get them agree to our terms—neutral ground, a military escort, and standard contact proceedings—but their affection for the ambassador was, I believe, the strongest motivator for their acquiescence.

The meeting took place on Elaxron, an inhabitable but as yet undeveloped planet in the near vicinity, and I commanded the troops in attendance. We were universally shocked at the sight of what the envoys had been hiding from us. The men had speculated when off-duty that we were encountering intelligent slime monsters or other creatures of legend, but none of us had expected simians. They have altered and evolved, of course, but the creatures we are meeting with are monkeys. I admit I was aghast. The ambassador was the only one who seemed unaffected, possibly due to her diplomatic training. My men and I retained composure, of course, but I intercepted more than one startled look before cowing the men back into military discipline.

Though I would have expected these creatures to fear us, they do not—or at least, not in the way I would think. It soon became clear that they had indeed evolved from the monkeys of our own world, sent out in experimental rockets and presumed dead centuries ago, during Earth’s first forays into spaceflight. Rather than looking upon our scientists as cruel experimenters, however, they view humans as a sort of father race. Their devotion is really quite touching. Their fear of being seen, it was revealed, was due to embarrassment rather than fear—they had not expected to encounter our species, which is only a legend in their society, for many more years.

After this revelation, I allowed my men to stand down and permitted the ambassador to meet with the simians alone as they desired. This discovery is an historic one, General, and I hope it is not out of line to say that I am proud to be a part of it. It has been rather quiet here since the ambassador left for her secluded meeting; I believe the men all appreciate the gravity and awe of this situation and have made themselves scarce.

With respect, I await your next dispatch.

COL. FULLER

Terina fumbled in her pocket for her pill box, a present from her mother. If you had to live with such an unfortunate disease, Mama had told her bluntly, you might as well have something nice and unobtrusive to hide the necessary medication. Terina had needed a pill then, too, letting her six-year-old bangs hide the shame in her eyes. Thirty years later, she no longer had the benefit of the curtain of hair, but the enameled pill box was a good focus for her gaze. Terina popped out one of the small blue spheres and tucked it under her tongue, letting her body dissolve the medicine as she tried to pay attention to the feed in front of her.

Bodies. Dead bodies, everywhere, laid out across a bloody plain that nearly made Terina sick when she had to look at it. She swallowed bile and willed the pill to dissolve faster, sneaking a glance at her fellow commanding officers, all arrayed around the readout in stolid contemplation.

“Looks like the blast points were precise,” one of the men observed, pointing out charred circles on the readout with his stylus. “They maximized human casualties rather than structural damage.”

“That makes sense,” a blue-eyed woman replied. “That’s one of the few plants that isn’t automated. Without its workers, production will be halved at best. They did their research.” She shook her head in detached admiration. “Intelligent terrorists.”

“Lieutenant Carreas?” the colonel asked, turning to Terina for her opinion. She jumped a little before she got a hold of herself.

“We’ll have to write to the families,” she said softly, then immediately regretted it when six pairs of incredulous eyes turned towards her. Terina shrank back and crunched the pill between her teeth; anything to get it to dissolve faster and restore her composure.

“Let’s focus on the situation at hand, Carreas,” the colonel suggested, and his disapproval was clear. Terina swallowed the pill. She could finally feel the medication beginning to take effect, detaching her from the weakness of outdated emotional reaction.

“Yes, sir.” Straightening, Terina examined the readouts again, this time more easily able to ignore the mangled bodies at the crime scene. “This looks like Redox residue,” she said at last, circling a blackened piece of ground with her own stylus in order to enlarge it. “It must have been the Xiang rebels. No other group has access to that kind of technology.” The rest of the lieutenants nodded and murmured their agreement. Terina knew that all of them thought her more than a little flighty due to her condition, but they still showed a grudging respect for her skills as an analyst and tactician, provided she remembered to take her medication.

“Good work, Carreas.” The colonel nodded sharply and turned his gaze to the blue-eyed woman. “Lieutenant Holmes, you will lead the dispatch team. Flush out the rebels; if they’re Xiang, they should still be in the area. Make sure they’re caught promptly. We can’t afford any more production delays.” The woman saluted smartly and turned to go, with the rest of the commanding officers following a step afterwards, as soon as the colonel gave the signal of dismissal. Terina hung behind.

As the rest of the lieutenants filed out of the briefing room, Terina traced the images on the screen with her finger, swallowing a lump in her throat. She knew she wasn’t supposed to think about the families. She wasn’t supposed to feel any of this. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all.

Turning quickly, Terina hurried to catch up with the rest of the group before she was missed. The slight blur of her vision was something she had learned to accept. Once the medication took full effect, it would be gone.

Daikan hadn’t told anyone about the birds. They were his secret, but each day, he had to prove to himself that his secret was still there.

The fields stretched out wide and sun-kissed, rows of wheat and corn and the colonial crop of beravados swaying gently in the wind. Daikan breathed the air as he walked, but he paid no attention to the beauty of the countryside. He had grown up on colony worlds, after all, and had never seen a true city. The contrast was lost on him. He was close to the valley now, the hollow where he’d first discovered his secret. The fields held no interest for him.

Daikan paused to catch his breath at the base of the last hill, his heart leaping in his chest. Every day that he made this pilgrimage, he asked himself the same questions. Would they be there today? Would it all still be true? Or had his secret vanished overnight, disappeared into the ether of impossibility? Daikan didn’t want to believe it was all a dream, so he hadn’t told anyone. Not yet. He took a deep breath and bent down to his hands and knees, crawling up the hill to peer over the top.

The birds were there. Stretching out in all directions, they covered the grassy plain, so close together that Daikan couldn’t see the ground. The valley was filled with birds of every shape and color, feathers rustling, all packed together more closely than Daikan had ever seen. He held his breath, eyes wide, terrified of disturbing them. Each day the birds seemed to multiply, with more kinds and colors filling the small hollow until Daikan couldn’t believe it would hold anymore, but this was far beyond the number from the day before. The valley full of feathers and beaks was a living thing, but the only sound that issued from it was a low, pervasive rustle. The birdlike chatter that had drawn him there for the first time a week ago was gone, and Daikan swallowed. He would keep still forever if it meant never breaking the wonder of the scene before him.

All at once, the rustle stopped. Daikan’s eyes were wide as saucers, fearful that the birds had discovered him, that he would be covered by angry wings and claws and pecked apart by sharp beaks, but the birds didn’t move. For a long moment, there was utter silence in the valley, an unnerving stillness that a similar crowd of human beings could never produce. Then the birds turned as one and launched themselves into flight.

It was stunning. Every bird in the valley, every member of every species that had been painstakingly transported from the homeworld, took wing at once. They flew over Daikan’s head with no regard whatsoever for the human boy, and without thinking he was on his feet, mouth open as he stared at the cloud of departing creatures. Feathers fell around him like rain, the combined effect of thousands of birds taking off at once, nearly blotting out the sky with their bodies.

“No!” Daikan cried out in dismay, stretching a futile hand out after them. “No, please! Come back!” His hand caught only a single black feather.

The birds didn’t listen. In a cacophony of flapping wings, they were gone.

Claude scuffed his feet against the burnished steel floor of his ship, a deep frown settled on his features. No matter how old he got, there were some women who always seemed to bring out the child in him, the contrite young boy who had just been given a firm scolding. Jelari could do it more easily than most.

“It’s not that I think it’s a bad thing,” she was explaining, her voice quiet and reasonable. “But really, Claude, even you have got to see that this is a little unhealthy. It makes sense for a mechanic to be devoted to his ship, but with this thing—Claude, I don’t know how else to say this. You treat it like a person.”

“I treat her like a ship,” Claude protested. “A good ship who’s gotten me through a lot of scrapes and deserves respect.”

“See?” Jehari said, giving him a look of profound disappointment. “You’re personifying again, Claude. You just called it a ‘she.’ A spaceship isn’t a person. It’s a piece of machinery.”

“Even landside sailors give their ships a gender,” Claude replied, but the sinking feeling in his heart told him he was losing yet another battle. Jehari just didn’t understand the special relationship Claude had with the Mermaid’s Wing. He’d raised the ship from a baby, just a junkyard scrap with a tiny spark of potential, and she had carried him through thick and thin. Every ounce of money Claude got from his various odd jobs wound up sunk into the Mermaid’s Wing, on engine parts or upgrades or new tools or even just a new coat of sealant. He could tell that his girlfriend was not amused.

“That is not the point, Claude, and you know it.” Jehari straightened and frowned, and inwardly, Claude groaned. This always meant that she meant business. “The point is that you are spending too much time working on the ship and not enough interacting with real human beings.”

By that, Claude knew that Jehari meant he’d been ignoring her, and he felt a pang of guilt. Jehari was a human, though, and humans could take care of themselves. The Wing couldn’t. “She needs me,” Claude protested weakly.

“Claude, this is not acceptable.” Jehari’s mouth was set in a thin line and Claude knew it was only a pale representation of the line he had just crossed. “I’m not going to live here with you and watch you waste all of your time on unnecessary engine diagnostics and triple-redundancy system installations. You need to make a choice. It’s either me or the ship.”

Slumping in his chair, Claude nodded. Somehow he had always known it would come to this. He felt a certain sense of defeat, but in the end, Jehari was probably right—it was better this way. He needed to learn how to let go and make choices. It was with a very real pang of regret that he dropped Jehari off at the next spaceport.

As he piloted the Mermaid’s Wing away from the station, Claude felt a lightness that he hadn’t experienced in months. He patted the control panel affectionately, noting as he did so that the Wing’s coolant system was running just a little below 90% efficiency. He’d have to take a look at that. “Don’t worry,” he told the ship with a smile. “I’ll take care of you.”

The sound from the slums is no longer the groan of bodies. Hunger cries, cussing, gunshots, the crackle of fires in old trash barrels—all of these are gone. Our poor no longer freeze or hunger.

I hear it every day on my way home from work, from beneath the narrow steel and concrete bridge that I cut across to make the 20:41 train. It’s the reason why so few commuters take this route, even though it’s a shortcut around the backlog of foot traffic in Darby Square. The noise comes from below, so far down that I can’t see them—not that I look. But I can hear them.

It’s a clattering noise, the metallic clicking of limbs or antennae against hard rock and metal. I hear that the streets down on the low levels aren’t always steel, but it sounds like it. Sometimes I hear a low thrum, dozens of them moving at once, milling around aimlessly and hopelessly without work or power. Sometimes it’s only one, and I can follow the mournful clinks as it wanders from outlet to outlet, cable extending and retracting at each one, jacking in to search for even the smallest hint of stray electricity.

Some activists claim that abandoning them is cruel, that it behooves us to care for our creations or at least to destroy them when they’ve outlived their usefulness, but the city can’t be bothered with the costs. I don’t think anyone pays much attention to those fringe groups, anyway. It was one thing to protest cruelty to living things, but to machines? Even the liberals thought that was taking things a little far.

Me, I don’t buy into all this ‘machine rights’ bullshit in the activist pamphlets, but I do think something should be done about those things. I know the government says it’s too late, that it’d take more time and manpower and money to round up all the little creeps than they’d get back from selling the recyclable parts, but hell. It’s only getting worse.

Most people don’t ever hear the noise. If you stick to the main corridors, you won’t. They’re all insulated anyway, so sounds from the lower levels don’t filter through. When I have to catch the late train, though, the mournful clatter from below makes my skin crawl.

The fate of the lower classes has been a platform for re-election since history books were invented, but times have changed. Politicians say that beating poverty is our responsibility to the poor, but just between you and me? It’d be more like a service to the rest of us.

The first day the sun didn’t rise, it was business as usual. The trains ran, the offices were open, and we just used a little more electricity than normal. We went to work, fed our fish, and gossiped about the news coverage while waiting for the bus. Over dinner the television told us what a strange event this was and how many records it had broken.

The second day the sun didn’t rise, we thought it odd. Our gossip spread to the cubicles and the break room and we listened to the radio, curious and nonplussed. It was weird, we told our coworkers and our friends and the people we met on the bus. It was definitely very weird.

The fifth day the sun didn’t rise, we complained. Extra lights were brought in and the power companies grew worried. The television said that California had adopted a mandatory rolling business schedule in which workdays were completed in shifts to reduce power usage. There was talk of rationing and of national disasters.

The tenth day the sun didn’t rise, we were panicked. We went to our doctors, our psychiatrists, our personal trainers, begging for help. The pharmaceutical companies had to keep their factories open twenty-four hours a day to produce enough Prozac.

The thirteenth day the sun didn’t rise, a national emergency was declared. We heard that it was the same everywhere, that no country had been spared. Our crops failed and our businesses closed. Thousands of us were dead from exposure or suicide. Our leaders gave speech after speech and our scientists despaired.

On the eighteenth day the sun didn’t rise, we locked ourselves in our homes and apartments. We looted closed stores and fought over food. Our water stopped running and we pissed in the streets.

On the thirty-seventh day the sun didn’t rise, neither did we.

“Space-faring monkies with a mirror fetish?”

“Yup. In The Day Ambrosia Paled by Kinstev Ramod, chapter six.”

“Damn. Okay, uhh… how about ice cream that turns your teeth green and carries a rare strand of the bubonic plague? Unleashed on a modern colony?”

“As a government experiment: Fire Warden by Jack Strapley. As a mad scientist’s coup de grace: On Being Trembleton by Emilia d’Oernga. With a time travel sub-plot: Terra Infirma by Marguerite Bloc. Sorry, Glenn. It’s all been done.”

Glenn groaned and leaned back in his chair, running his hand through the long part of his hair and pulling it out over his eyes, staring at the brown strands in frustration. “Damn it all! How am I supposed to write if there aren’t any original ideas?”

“Hey, come on, Glenn.” Neil grimaced at his friend in sympathy. “You’re just not thinking outside the box. Look, I know it’s tough, but there’s got to be something you can do that’s not already in here.” He gestured at the Central Database terminal he’d been using, the letters on the keyboard nearly worn off from the fruitless searches he’d made.

Neil’s words were encouraging, but his tone was not—it’d been months since Glenn had come up with his last viable story idea, and he still remembered the celebration they’d had. Now their fridge was bare, and there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in the house. Neil let out a long sigh. “Look… maybe you need a rest, yeah? Let’s go out for a while. We’ll go to the club, see Jeannie and the guys, and just relax. I bet it’d help. What do you say?”

Glenn made a noise of frustration and sat up straight again. “No. No! We’re almost out of cash. What good is going out going to do? That’ll just make things worse. I have to think of something, and fast!”

Neil sighed and turned back to the terminal. “Glenn, we’ve been at this for hours. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“No. No, I’ve got one.” Glenn turned sharply, his face lighting up as his eyes latched onto Neil. He paused dramatically. “How about… a guy with writer’s block trying to figure out what to put in a story?”

Neil groaned loudly and threw a stylus at Glenn. “Do I even have to answer? I think it’d break the database if I tried a search on that. Billions of billions of hits.”

Glenn chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Geez. I just wish that for once I could write something without caring that someone else already did it.”

“Wouldn’t sell.”

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

The two men stared in silence for a moment, Glenn at the ceiling, Neil at the screen that was nothing more than one massive search field.

“Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“How about a story about a writer who hacks into the Central Database and erases the old records so that editors will think his story is original?”

“You know,” Neil said with a slow grin, “I don’t think that one’s been done yet.”