Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ant-Man

written by David Steffen

Ant-Man is a 2015 superhero film based on the Marvel comics characters of the same name. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is the inventor of a suit that allows the wearer to shrink and grow. When the wearer is small, their punches land with the same force as when they’re full size, but concentrated onto the area of a pinhead. Pym worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. using the suit until 1989 when he resigned when he learned that they were trying to replicate the suit technology for military applications, and started his own company: Pym Technologies. In the present, Pym’s daughter Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) is working with Pym’s former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), to force Pym out of his own company. Cross is determined to reverse-engineer Pym’s shrinking suit, and keeps on trying despite failure after failure.

Meanwhile, well-intentioned small-time thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is released on parole, but has trouble finding legitimate work because of his ex-con status. Pressured by his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) to find a way to pay child support, he returns to a life of crime to try to break into a safe in the house of an older man who is supposed to be on vacation. What he finds in the safe is the Ant-Man suit, planted there by Pym, and when he tries it on Pym puts him through a crash-course in its abilities (not only growing and shrinking, but being able to control ants using electrical signals). Pym recruits Scott to help him thwart Cross’s plan to perfect the suit.

Ant-Man is as much a comedy as it is an action movie, unusual in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where action is usually most of the focus with humor as a sideline. It’s friendly for kids, though a couple parts could be scary, bad guys are generally incapacitated instead of dying. Paul Rudd has a knack for dry delivery, and he is perfect for this role, bringing much of the humor to the film, and Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly are great in their roles as well. I watched this movie with my child and we enjoyed it a lot. I’d recommend it for all ages.

GAME REVIEW: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

written by David Steffen

I thought it was fun to discover the circumstances of the world and Link’s situation in-game with no foreknowledge, so I don’t want to talk too much about the plot so you can discover it for yourself. Unsurprisingly it does fit into the series’ long-term trend of using incarnations of the same three characters and building new stories around them.

As you can tell from even that brief introduction, this game does verge more into the science fictional than past entries in the series. Ancient Sheikah devices might be powered by magic but they are more like what we would call technology, and have a fun anachronistic design that mixes the feel of old temple relics with advanced tech.

You discover the main plot of the game as you finish the first several objectives, to save a world that’s already been devastated from a continuing threat. There are a handful of major objectives you need to do to be able to do that, which are marked on your map early on. If you wanted to just power through the game you could aim specifically for those right away, but there’s also a wide world out there for you to explore, varied landscapes from frozen tundra to burning hot volcano. Exploring will help you find equipment and other enhancements that will make it easier to survive your various challenges, by increasing your hearts, or finding better weapons, or better protective clothing that has special effects such as being fireproof for exploring volcanic regions.

One of the main frustrations I had early on was that the weapons are very impermanent. I’m used to Link finding a sword and then using it forever. But the weapons you find in this game are not very durable–odds are if you get in a fight with a few enemies you’ll probably break at least one weapon in the middle of the fight. Early on I always thought I was going to run out of weapons in the middle of a fight, but I managed to get just enough from scavenging fallen enemies to keep going.

Much of the challenge of the game happens early on between fragile weapons and extreme temperatures that Link doesn’t have the equipment to handle. One piece of goods news is that you get the ability early on to teleport to travel points that you have visited, so if you do get in trouble you can poof to somewhere safe instead of being stuck to meet your doom.

One of the major ongoing tasks with the biggest payoff is to find Sheikah shrines. Foremost because each one comes with one of these waypoints for teleporting and they are scattered all over the map. To find each one you actually have to travel on foot, but once you find them you can then teleport to that specific location at will. So you get a major payoff for each one you find, because your practical travel time to any given point on the map shrinks because every shrine is zero travel time from anywhere else you go. Finding all of the shrines is also one of the major extra things you can do–you don’t have to find more than a few to finish the game, but the game would be a lot harder and take a lot longer if you didn’t have them.

Many of the interesting sidequests involve collecting resources, herbs or stones or small animals, for the use in crafting equipment or elixirs. This encourages you to explore different regions more thoroughly where you may find these, and you can just keep an eye out for them while you’re looking for more major quest things too.

The exploration and sidequests are the best part of the game. If I had any complaints at all it would be that the main quest is kind of disappointing in comparison. I finished it and I was like “oh, that’s it?” but then I happily went back to find more sidequests.

I haven’t found everything there is in the game yet and I plan to go back and play more. I also plan to pick up the downloadable content with some extra quests and equipment.

Visuals
Lovely, especially large scale scenery shots which this game does extroardinarily well, giving a sense of huge scale even though in-game you can traverse it much faster than in real life. It’s a lot of fun to explore Hyrule on a larger scale than ever.

Audio
Great music in a series known for it.

Challenge
Highly variable depending on exactly what you’re trying to do and how quickly you want to make it through the main quest. I found the first part of the game the most challenging because I had only a few hearts to work with and subpar weapons and armor didn’t have the materials or know-how to properly make food or potions to compensate for my handicaps and was still figuring out how to survive cold temperatures and that sort of thing. The rest of the gameplay was challenging enough to be fun, but that very early part was where it was the hardest, probably because I hadn’t caught up to the learning curve yet.

Story
Plenty of story, much of it told in the form of legends about yourself. As with most/all of Zelda games it works on a repeating cycle of incarnations of Zelda and Link and Ganon facing off against each other, always interesting to see how the timeline works, particularly since Ocarina of Time branched it.

Session Time
The nicest thing about the Nintendo Switch is that all games have a short session time, because you can put the console to sleep or wake it at any point, even during cut scenes. So blissfully short because of excellent console design.

Playability
Reasonably simple controls, much of them similar to the control scheme that’s been used since Ocarina of Time, with the Z button used to focus on enemies so you can pivot around them easily. There are probably less things to keep track of because Link doesn’t have the big inventory of usable tools he unlocks as in other games, though there are plenty of functionality between various weaponry and especially in being able to climb almost anything and to paraglide. There are multiple ways to reach many goals, which makes it fun to find one that fits your playing style.

Replayability
Plenty of replayability, whether you just want to explore, or if you’re a completionist who wants to find all of the shrines. Many of them you’ll just stumble across, but to find every single one is quite a challenge (which I haven’t managed yet, I’ve still got about 15 of 120 to go). There are also some unique armor sets that you need to complete specific missions to find to get their special powers.

There is also downloadable content to expand the game with extra quests, extra items, for another $20. I have enjoyed the main game so much I am definitely going to download that at some point.

Originality
Of course it’s part of a long and beloved series of games, so in a lot of ways it’s familiar, but this does mark a very new direction for a Zelda game in the wide-open gameplay. It keeps a lot of the same feel with the different fantastical races and familiar regions, but with much more emphasis on wide open exploration. The addition of the ability to climb almost anything and to paraglide make exploring particularly fun because those open up new ways of thinking about moving around a huge map.

Playtime
I finished the main quest of the game in over 100 hours (mostly in 15 minute increments). If I had been determined to finish the main quest as fast as possible, I could certainly have done so in less time, probably half of that at most, and if someone has an idea where they’re going could probably finish it in significantly less than even that. But the biggest strength of the game is wide world exploration, so if you’re rushing to finish it I think you’ll be disappointed.

Overall
Excellent new addition to a new longstanding popular game series that has already set a high bar. This game is very familiar to fans of the series, but also very new in that it’s much more like an “Elder Scrolls, but in Hyrule” game (albeit without the complicated character leveling system etc). If you’re looking for a game that will take a lot of time to fully explore for your buck, this is a great choice. Lots of action, lots of side quests and crafting stuff, and just the fun of setting out across a completely unknown landscape to find whatever you can find.

Highly recommended, my favorite game in years. $60 for digital download from Nintendo or physical cartridge from various retailers.

DP FICTION #45B: “The Coal Remembers What It Was” by Paul R. Hardy

Oh, I remember my mam. She’s been gone nigh on forty years, but I still think of the mornings when I were little and she’d show me the demons. She’d be up at the crack of dawn, kneeling down afore the stove to shove kindling in the firebox with one hand because she were cradling my baby brother in the other. And then I’d come along and pick a bit of coal out of the scuttle and ask: is there a demon in this one? And she’d say no, and I’d put it back and pick up another and ask: is there a demon in this one? And she’d say no again and I’d take another and like as not she’d clip me round the ear before I said owt else. “It’s not demons, Elsie,” she’d say. “The coal remembers what it was, that’s all. But it’s still only a lump of coal and I need to get the fire lit for your dad’s bath so get away with you and stop bothering me with your nonsense!”

Dad were on the night shift, you see. I hardly ever saw him with the hours he worked. He’d get home in the morning so covered in coal dust I thought he were a piece of coal himself. And then he’d have his bath and go straight to bed, and he were out again before I were back from school. People are always asking me about him. I get sick of all the questions. They’re only asking because he died in the disaster, but that were seventy years ago and it’s not like I were down there in the mine with him when it happened. I were back home, with Mam. Course I was. I were only little. I were up early to look at the demons.

Mam knew how much I liked to see them, so she’d call me back in once she’d got the kindling lit. She’d throw a few coals on top and have me stare into the firebox until they were glowing bright red. And then, if you were lucky, one of them would come to life. It’d crack, like there were a chick inside breaking out of an egg. Only it were never a chick–it were always something else, like a scorpion or a millipede, or a little newt sometimes. It were coal through and through, but it looked just like the real thing. I liked the beetles best. They’d be shining bright orange with blue flames across their backs, crawling through the fire to the edge of the grate where Mam had closed the door so they couldn’t get out and burn the house down. They’d flutter their wings, but they’d be too heavy to take off and go up the flue. Poor things.

Mam would throw the rest of the scuttle in, then she’d put the kettle on and braid my hair while she waited for the water to boil. And she’d say: “It’s not demons, Elsie. People used to think that, but the coal remembers, that’s all. Set it alight and the coal remembers what it used to be when the world was young.” She were right. I’ve heard all those clever folk try and explain it with their long words, but they don’t know any more than she did. ‘Pyrozoic’, that’s what they call them. Pyrozoic fossils from the Carboniferous Period, millions of years ago when it were only insects and salamanders and the like. Well, Mam knew that much but she didn’t care. Far as she were concerned, seeing beetles and all else come out of the coal just meant the fire were hot enough to put the rest of the scuttle in.

She taught me this one thing about them, though. If you looked close, if you looked right into their eyes, you could see what they remembered. All of a sudden you’d be chasing centipedes in leaf litter, or laying a hundred sticky eggs on a fern leaf, or standing stock still on a dead branch and hoping a horrible great salamander wouldn’t gobble you up. That’s what she’d show me, those mornings when she were getting the bath ready. I suppose it kept me quiet. Didn’t have telly then, you see. Nothing else to watch, like the little ones have nowadays. I showed my granddaughter a bit of burning coal once and she were bored of it after five minutes. No one’s interested in coal these days.

No one’s interested in my mam, neither. But I get questions about my dad all the bloody time. That silly woman from the mining museum were on the phone again last week, going “Ooh, Elsie, tell us about how your father died down the pit, all them years ago in the Heatherley disaster, let me come over and we’ll do an interview for the new memorial.” But it were a lifetime ago. I don’t remember my dad at all. She only wants to know because he were in the union and spoke up about the conditions down the mine, the long hours and shoddy gear—he said there’d be an accident one day, and he were right. But he didn’t talk to me about it. Why would he? I were only a little girl. I never saw him, except those mornings when he came home from the pit. He were never there to say good night, never there when I came home from school, and then on his days off he were at a meeting or down the pub most times. I don’t have any memories, not of him I don’t.

No, wait, there’s one thing. I asked Mam once if he were a piece of coal, because he always came home so filthy from the pit. And then if he’d crack open like the coal did if he were set on fire, and what he’d remember if he did. She gave me such a look! And then she laughed. She told me he’d never go like coal, I mean remembering what he was. He were too busy with the union to remember anything. Never remembered to wipe his feet, or to bring back milk from the dairy, or anything she ever told him. And that’s all I know about him, really. Why should I bother trying to remember him? That’s all they ask about. That and the disaster. But they never ask about Mam, and what she did.

She were the one got us out of Heatherley, me and my little brother Bill. Got us on the road to the next village. Pouring with rain, it was. We stopped at the church hall with all the others what made it. We’d lost everything except the clothes on our backs. Then we went on to Leeds and stayed with my aunt. Them was hard times. Mam never said owt about what happened back at Heatherley. She was like one of them soldiers come back from the war with all the stuffing knocked out of them. She carried on, though. Had to. Compensation didn’t come for years and it were a pittance when it did. She couldn’t wait for that. She had two little ones to look after, so she went to work in a mill, and then I did the same once I were old enough to get out of school.

And now they want to put up a memorial for the ones what died, that’s what the woman from the museum keeps saying. Some bloody great block of stone with their names on it. Supposed to last forever. They had one of them back in Heatherley for the Great War, what they call the First World War these days. Well, that’s one block of stone didn’t last forever. It were lost with the village. Don’t suppose the others will last, neither. Bill’s on the one in Leeds, the one with the angel on top. He were in the navy, got torpedoed out in the Atlantic, so they put him on the side of the stone with all the others what died in the second war. You know, the part they weren’t supposed to use because there weren’t supposed to be another war. Not that anyone cares. There were spray paint all over it, last I looked, and the council haven’t bothered cleaning it off, not for two years they haven’t.

And anyway, they’d never put my mam’s name on the bloody memorial, would they? She didn’t die in Heatherley. She lived. And after that she worked like a dog to keep me and my brother out of the orphanage, and when she did die, it were cancer what took her. They don’t carve your name in stone for that, do they? No, they bloody don’t. Nobody remembers my mother, except me. They don’t even ask her name. It was Maureen. Maureen Machin. Put that on your block of stone, go on. But you won’t, and you know why? Because she knew when to run. She got us out of Heatherley and then she told me to get out of Leeds before the blitz started in the war and I should have listened—I were almost killed when the house two doors down were hit. Then she told Bill not to join the navy, and he didn’t listen so now he’s at the bottom of the ocean. Told Dad he should get out of the pit as well and do you think he listened? Did he heck! We could have gone to Leeds, but he wanted to stay and fight. It were only a year after the big strike, the General Strike, and the bosses were punishing us for it. They were cutting everything back, wages and safety and everything. All the folk in Heatherley knew there was going to be an accident sooner or later, but Dad wouldn’t go. So Mam kept her eye out. Kept plates on the dresser right close to each other, so they’d go clink if the ground shook. Old trick, that were.

Clink, they went. Just a little noise. I was still yawning and I hardly noticed. And then they went clink again. And that time I did notice because Mam jumped back from the stove! I asked her if she’d burned her hand on a hot coal, but she told me to shush and listen. I couldn’t hear a thing. Except then the plates went clink again, and that were enough for Mam. She bundled up my brother in one arm, grabbed my hand with the other and pulled me out the front door and into the middle of the road. We were the only ones out there. I expect she were wondering if she’d gone mad.

And then the ground really shook.

It were like hearing a noise with your feet to begin with, and then the cobbles were shaking and slates were coming down off the roof. That got people out their front doors. All of them coming out in their nightshirts and dressing gowns. Some went down the hill toward the mine to see what were happening. Our neighbour did that. She were worried about her son what was down there and ran off to get him. Never saw her again. It were already too late.

The ground shook harder then, and a shower of slate came down off the tops of all the houses. I saw one poor man hit on the shoulder, right in front of me. Everyone ran for the middle of the road.

But it were worse down the pit. We was halfway up the hill with the colliery below us and we could see the pit-head winding gear and it were falling down, great big wheels crashing into the offices and flames coming up from the mine itself.

Then there were this bloody great groaning noise, like the earth were waking up and stretching, until this massive crack broke open across the village. I never saw the like, not even in the war when they were bombing Leeds. A dozen houses fell into the crack and billows of smoke and fire came back up. Then a leg—this huge great insect leg—came reaching up out of the hole, feeling around, smashing more houses as it went. It were thirty yards long or more, that leg. And it were on fire.

It were the coal seam, what ran under the village. Sparks from the machines had set fire to it and woke the damn thing up and made it remember what it were like to walk above ground. And the fire had spread so fast it hadn’t had time to break up into little coals, so it all came up as one great big creature, the one with the strongest memory. It dragged itself out of the ground until the head came clear and I could see it were a dragonfly, huge eyes burning bright yellow with blue flame all over. Oh, those eyes. You couldn’t look into those eyes and not see it. Hot swamps and fern-trees rising up in forests full of steam. Snapping jaws of ten foot salamanders coming up at you from under the water. Dancing in the air with your love and laying eggs in a pond, and then… then a shaking, and fire in the sky, and ash drifting down from above, weighing on your wings as you tried to get clear but the ashfall went on further than anything could fly and then you fell from the sky, tumbling through fern leaves as the cinders buried you alive along with all the world you ever knew…

The whole village saw it. They couldn’t see nothing else. They were all staring up at the thing, gaping like fools when they should have run. A few walked toward it, to see better. I was one of them.

But Mam were stronger than me. Or maybe she felt me pulling on her hand, and that woke her up to it. Either way, she wouldn’t let me go. She clamped her eyes shut and stepped back past all the others while I pulled against her and made her fight for every step. So she stopped, hauled me close and tried to scoop me up, and still I squirmed against her, turning so I could see the beast. It were flapping its wings and trying to jump in the air like it did when it were alive, as though it didn’t know its wings were coal and not the gossamer they once were. I felt a hot wind blow on my face as it flapped its wings and struck the church steeple. It smashed into pieces, ringing the bell and sending it clanging to the ground. The wing broke too, shattered and fell in a shower of burning coal. There were people down there, just stick figures in the distance but I saw them crushed where they stood and some of them burst into flames among the coals…

And then I didn’t want to look any more. I stopped fighting my mam and she hefted me onto her shoulder with my face buried in her hair. She headed up the hill past all the ones that couldn’t stop staring, the ones what were caught up in all those memories, no matter that they were memories of a world that were dead and gone.

Just like they are now. All of them back in Heatherley, dead where they stood or dead where they fell. The whole village, dead.

But not us. Mam got us on the road and over the hill and out of sight of the thing and we never went back. Mam would never talk of it. But some of the other survivors did. Years later, when they thought I were old enough. Or when they were drunk. They’d say the whole village were knocked down. The mine and the church and the school as well. All gone. And the dragonfly, that died too. The rain came and doused the fires above ground and froze it where it was, until it collapsed under its own weight.

But the fire was still burning underground. Things was still moving down there. You couldn’t go back. It were hot enough that the coal kept on waking up in little bits and pieces, and things crawled up out of the earth for years after. Still do, last I heard. They’ve tried to put it out but it never worked. I expect it’ll go on as long as there’s coal left to burn.

And somewhere down there is my dad. He never had his bath so he died all covered in coal dust, like he were a piece of coal himself. And maybe Mam was wrong about him turning to coal for real. All it’ll take is a few million years under the ground. And then perhaps he’ll be dug up and burnt for someone else’s bath, and he’ll wake and remember what he was, and someone’ll look in his eyes and see us, me and my mam and my brother.

But I doubt it. He hardly ever noticed us when he were alive. I never knew him. I don’t know why people keep asking me about him. It weren’t him that saved my life that day. It weren’t him that brought me and my brother up. Mam did that. People want to remember my dad because of how he died. But I remember my mam instead, and I leave the remembering of my dad to the coal. That’s all there is to it.

Author’s Note: This tale comes out of one of those legendary Codex story contests you keep hearing about. The prompt was the following three words: “Melancholy Anthracite Arthropod”. I had to rewrite them a bit.

Paul R. Hardy lives in the UK with a coffee habit, a laptop and various health problems. He also fulfils a minor administrative function in an NHS hospital, which is handy for the health problems. In a former life, he was a penniless filmmaker who won a BBC drama award and wrote a book on how to make short films; in this current incarnation, he writes speculative fiction that has appeared (or will appear) in venues such as Unidentified Funny Objects, Escape Pod and Deep Magic.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ferdinand

written by David Steffen

Ferdinand is a computer-animated children’s comedy/adventure distributed by 20th Century Fox. The title character Ferdinand (John Cena) grew up on a Mexican ranch that breeds bulls for bullfighting in the arena. The bulls compete with each other for the honor of being chosen for a bullfight, with the idea that they will defeat the matador and win eternal glory. But young Ferdinand doesn’t want to fight, and one day he runs away and is adopted by Nina (Julia Saldanha) and her family where he is raised as a beloved pet, and he lives happily there for a time. His favorite time of year is the flower festival, because he loves nothing more than smelling flowers. But when he is fully grown, they tell him he can’t come along because he is too scary at his full-grown size. He sneaks into town anyway, but is considered a threat to the populace and is sent back to the ranch where he meets the other bulls he knew as calves. The other bulls treat him poorly, but a nanny goat named Lupe (Kate McKinnon) decides to take him in and train him to be a fighter, but he’s no more interested in fighting than he was before, and the only way he might be able to avoid fighting is if he can escape.

I liked Ferdinand. He’s a sweet creature, and given the casual violence in a lot of cartoons and superhero shows and etc it was refreshing to have a pacifist protagonist who isn’t a coward, he just doesn’t want to fight. Although I liked Ferdinand himself, Lupe really stole the show–she had most of the best lines and Kate McKinnon’s delivery made them all the better. But, my goodness did I find this movie depressing. The characters were all fine, but the situation they’re in, where they’re all competing for the right to be in a bullfight where they will be baited and wounded for no better reason than to force them to be violent to fight harder in a fight that they cannot possibly win, and will be killed at the end of. The alternative is showing that they can’t fight at all and getting sent to the butcher to get turned into meat. The movie’s fine, though it’s nothing spectacular like Pixar film would be. But the background scenario is just so bleak, I had trouble getting over it when I was expecting this to be a light kid’s film.

BOOK REVIEW: End of Watch by Stephen King

written by David Steffen

End of Watch is a speculative mystery book by Stephen King, the third in a series of mystery books about retired detective Bill “Kermit” Hodges. The first book in the series is Mr. Mercedes, the second book is Finders Keepers. The nature of the series means that I can’t really describe the contents of this book without major spoilers for the other books, especially Mr. Mercedes. So, if you don’t want those spoiled, stop right here.

In Mr. Mercedes a dozen people were killed lining up early in the morning for a local job fair by a stolen car plowing through the line, and police are baffled. But when the killer tries to goad depressed retired detective Bill Hodges into committing suicide, Hodges finds a new reason to live as he sets out to catching him. With the help of his neighbor Jerome Robinson and newly-made friend Holly Hodges, they catch the killer–Brady Hartsfield just before he sets off a suicide bomb in the middle of a pop concert filled with teenage girls. Holly clocks him over the head with a sock full of ball bearings and puts Hartsfield in a coma.

In End of Watch, Brady is waking, and there’s something different about him. The nurses complain that things move around his room when no one is touching them.

Meanwhile, Hodges’s old police partner Pete brings him and Holly (who run detective agency Finders Keepers) to the scene of an apparent suicide. There’s something fishy about the suicide doesn’t seem right to Pete.

As you might guess, suicide is a prevalent and recurring element of this book, so if that’s a topic you have trouble reading about, you should just skip this book entirely.

It’s hard to talk too much more about it, because a lot of the book is discovering all the details about it. It’s a solid character story and the sections following the villain are straight-up horrific.

This is a solid finish to the story started in Mr. Mercedes (after a not-bad but extremely tangential second book), the book as a whole is a decent Stephen King books. The ending I found a little bit weak but the rest of the book more than makes up for it.

DP FICTION #45A: “The Memory Cookbook” by Aaron Fox-Lerner

The first thing to remember is that your memories are no longer your own. You’re worth something now that you’ve been implanted, but only so long as you can remember something worthwhile.

You need to think about your memories in terms of who will consume them. What kind of mood will it give them? What do they want to feel? What food or drinks will be paired with the memory? Will they be remembering it alone?

Remember that while your memories may be yours, they are being recalled in the service of paying customers. You should never remind them of this fact, but always be aware that they are the ones with money and you are not.

This guide will tell you how to make your memories consumable. This being the introduction, I’ll keep it brief and suggest some basic types and their pairings as a primer.

You need to understand that you create your memories by framing them. Without that frame, without the start and end point, all you have is the aimlessness of thought. You’ve doubtless already been given your code. Say it and the memory starts being recorded, say it again and it stops. Wait for at least 10 minutes, then you’ll need an assistant to take the chip out of your head. You won’t be responsible for inserting the chip into clients’ implants, but you will be responsible for pairing the harvested memory with a meal that matches its feelings and sentiments well.

A note about the food: don’t feel that it must match your memory in terms of place. Remember that feeling is the most important thing. More detailed recipes are available later in the guide, but you have authority (up to a point) in what you prepare.

The following are the basic types of memories you’ll be serving, along with accompaniments that tend to work particularly well. For more details on these, please check the corresponding sections later in the guide.

1. Light Starters (Invigorating)

A principle selling point of our memories is the idea of being able to see the world. If you have been hired for this service, then you’re probably from another country. The goal here is not to give the customer an in-depth understanding of your home culture. The goal is to give them something quick that they can appreciate without the awkwardness of being an outsider. Think of the most recognizable aspects of your culture. Festivals, holidays, and weddings are all perfect opportunities to showcase these.

While this memory should be true to your own culture, avoid any traces of nationalism, xenophobia, or racism. Holidays or celebrations involving your home country’s government are best left avoided. There are appropriate dishes involving senses of melancholy or even tragedy. This is probably not one of those.

Suitable accompaniments: Mixed drinks, olives, vegetables and dip.

2. Light Starters (Calming)

The other option for a starter is to make this something that’s relaxing rather than exuberant. Childhood memories work well, especially everyday moments that aren’t dull.

I often used a brief memory from my own childhood, when I was around nine, just a memory of playing in my father’s study. I built miniature cities from the books he had lining the walls, sitting in their streets, erecting towers and homes, making them so extensive I could wander among these towns of my own making.

That kind of thing is the only bit you need. Make sure to keep any associated bitterness these memories might arouse out of the frame. I would have to make sure not to think about the fate of those books in my father’s study, my miniature towns burning up like the real city around them. I needed to avoid thinking of my father’s uselessness as our home got drawn into civil war, all his respect and learning amounting to nothing in the face of guns, bombs, and fanaticism. Dwell on it as much as you need when you’re not recording the memories, but you must ensure this doesn’t seep into the harvested memory itself. Keep this recollection pure: a select moment frozen in time.

Suitable accompaniments: Warm drinks, garlic bread, any heated hors d’oeuvres.

3. Appetizers

Now it’s more appropriate to bring in complications, things that might lend your memories a slight touch of melancholy, which is a necessary ingredient of nostalgia, after all.

Romance works well, usually the younger the better. Unless the relationship ended truly acrimoniously, you don’t need to block out any awareness of its end.

I’ve personally had my best recollections from my late teenage years, my first entry into university. I recalled the giddy sensations of texting a girl and getting messages back, suddenly aware that she was reciprocating my interest. Or the first time I entered a new lover’s apartment, walking through her rooms, over her rugs, into her kitchen, stopping by the bookshelves and walls to see what was on each, marveling at how she had created a better space to live in than I ever had, a space where I now wanted to spend all my time.

The knowledge of how these affairs will end gives them a nice sort of piquancy, but might not be necessary. I can only create memories from my own experience, and I’ve never had a romance that lasted. If you have a relationship that still survives, feel free to use it.

Suitable accompaniments: Wine, soup, salad.

4. Mains

This will change depending on what the customers want. If you’re known for a certain kind of experience, you’re likely to be selected based on that.

I liked to draw from my early twenties, years of being young and pretentious, let loose upon the city and thinking of it much in the way that colonialists approached the New World, “discovering” and conquering every other bookstore, coffee shop, movie theater, and ad hoc art space, years spent in a tangle of limbs, light night conversations, mid-afternoon hangovers, pieces for zines and webpages and small unread journals, various minor jobs and internships never paying enough, long stretches spent alternating between tiny walk-ups and my family’s spacious, well-appointed home.

And with it comes the flood of memories from later, now bleeding into every one of these that I recall, the lovers married and moved, the friends drifted away, the art spaces long closed for lack of funds, the bookstores now shuttered or torched, the pretentious young men first denouncing political inequities in escalating shows of conspicuous intellectual bravery before later disappearing, one by one, just as they’d stood up. The journals no one even thinks to publish now. The family home charred and demolished, ruined by an errant shell and structural collapse, the handsome age of its structure finally proving a liability. The acquaintances and lovers and friends and bitter enemies scattered across the globe, finding succor and shelter wherever they could, just like I did, none of us having ever imagined that what we thought of as other place problems could happen to us.

The customers will actually want to remember this with you. It’s a chance to be there at the Jewish neighborhoods of Warsaw before Hitler, Aleppo’s old alleyways before Assad, Alexandria before the library was burned.

Just make sure to keep the bitterness out of it. Keep the feeling of loss, but watch out for that bitterness, and never implicate the customers. You’ll hate them for their position, for making you remember, for being privy to your personal memories, but don’t let that seep into the memories themselves.

They’ve paid a lot of money to relive the exact same things that you did, to live your memories over a nice meal and come out of the experience feeling enriched, educated, and aware. They will not forgive you if you spoil that feeling for them. If you have taken this job, you cannot afford to spoil that feeling for them.

Suitable accompaniment: Any food relating to your memories. Don’t worry about authenticity.

5. Desserts

This is your chance to ease them back down. People generally don’t pay to be depressed. Let them end with self-satisfaction. Give them another high, circle back to an earlier memory, something that should give the impression of added depth now that they’ve lived more of your personal experience.

I often remembered another childhood day, a soothing, wondrous early childhood memory back in my home, both my grandparents and parents there, the customer now knowing that eventually this home would be destroyed.

Alternately, go with another memory of lovers, girlfriends, husbands. A memory of the kind of day that only becomes The Perfect Day in retrospect, the one where your relationship was at a high point and the world seemed to align perfectly with it for one brief, single period of time. Keep it focused once more on that day, and context will do the rest.

Suitable accompaniment: Sweets, fruit, baked goods, tea, coffee. Avoid hard liquor.

6. Other Requests

Customers will have other types of memories they’ll request. You have the power to fulfill these or not. Often these will be related to their own problems, and it’s best to stay discreet about that. Fathers will want childhood memories in search of worse parenting than their own. Divorcees will seek out memories of love to contrast with their failed marriages. Spoiled heirs will request memories of hardship for a false sense of authenticity.

Sex, of course, is always a prominent factor. Don’t be afraid to turn this down. If you choose to remember sex, it’s likely to dominate your career in unsavory ways. It’s where I drew my line, as if keeping out memories of bedrooms and backseats somehow meant that I’d maintained private dignity with people who had paid to literally pry into my head, turning my whole life into their product.

Then there are the requests for misery. Customers will want to “understand.” It’s best to give them what they think they want. Let them have memories from your home country of war, disease, rape, starvation, poverty. They’ll pretend it’s made them into a better person. Never remember your hardships over here, that’s considered controversial.

Don’t give them what you really want to. Don’t open those gates and remember how bitter you are, how much you hate the customer no matter how well-meaning he or she is. Never let them know how they’ll never truly understand you despite reliving your memories, and how you’ll never be able to truly respect them.

Don’t let them know about coming here, about your basic struggles to make a living, about being a middle-aged man who’d always depended on his education and was suddenly worthless when thrust into a country whose language he couldn’t speak well. Of being prodded and scanned and analyzed just to get into the country, treated with constant mistrust, hating it more here than your devastated home. Of the literal walled cities, gated to separate people like the customer from people like you. Of how place of birth alone was enough to mean that they’ve been isolated from the rising seas and drying fields, the military coups and privatized drone strikes and food riots that shake the rest of the planet. Of how their world keeps turning after your own has fallen apart.

Don’t remember these things. Don’t remember your resentments. Don’t remember your discomfort. Don’t remember your self-hatred. Don’t remember your humiliation. Don’t remember being implanted so you can share more than you ever hoped to.

Don’t remember these things and you’ll be fine. Don’t remember these things and you should have a full career, just like I once did.

Those bitter memories were the most satisfying thing I ever remembered, but they killed my career. The expensive implants are gone. The only work I could find is writing this guide for new employees like you. The only small rebellion that remains for me is typing and then deleting the same few subversive sentences into my drafts of this guide, too afraid to even send them on to my editors for fear of losing the scant salary I’m left depending on. Still, deleting these sentences is the only thing I now regret. My memories may be worthless once more, but at least they belong to me alone.

Now, please turn to the next page for a guide to proper implant procedure. I hope you enjoy your time working here.

Aaron Fox-Lerner was born in Los Angeles and currently lives in Beijing. His fiction has previously appeared in Pseudopod, Grimdark, Pinball, the Puritan, and other publications.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

BOOK REVIEW: From a Certain Point of View

written by David Steffen

From a Certain Point of View is a short story anthology media tie-in to the Star Wars universe, released in October 2017 by Del Rey. To celebrate 40 years of Star Wars, the anthology contains 40 stories that take place in or around the events of the original Star Wars film released in 1977, but from the point of view from a supporting character. All of the author’s proceeds for the book go to the charity First Book that provides books, teaching materials, and other essentials to educators and organizations serving children in need.

Most anthologies I’ve read contain stories that are either loosely connected by themes (an anthology of vampire stories, or alien love stories, or mad scientist stories, or stories of marginalized groups in history, etc…), or might be based in some kind of shared speculative world but which aren’t really part of same arc, or which are not really connected at all. This anthology felt very different to me in that the shape of the anthology as a whole has an arc, and it’s an arc most geeks are familiar with, the arc of the original Star Wars film. But it’s a story arc as told through negative space. Instead of following the story of Luke Skywalker meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi and hiring help from Han Solo and Chewbacca and rescuing Leia Organa and destroying the Death Star, this anthology read from start to finish tells that story, but through those affected by the actions of the heroes and villains we are most familiar with. This is a great use of the Star Wars mythology because an anthology like this can only reach its full effect if the audience is familiar with the original arc, so that they can understand the significance of how these secondary characters affect and are affected by the events shown in the movie itself. It’s a great idea, well executed, by some of the best contemporary short story authors.

Some of the stories are what you would expect from Star Wars stories: full of action and intrigue and that sort of thing, with rebels as heroes But the ones that really stood out to me were the oddball stories, the ones with an arc that didn’t follow the usual Star Wars arc, the ones that did something funny or unexpected. I’ll mention a few of my favorites of these with a brief teaser for each.

“The Sith of Datawork” by Ken Liu
From the point of view of an Imperial bureaucrat aboard the Star Destroyer Devestator. He is approached by a friend who was the gunner who chose not to shoot down the escape pod carrying R2-D2 and C3PO from the Tantive IV, afraid he will be punished for his choice he uses the power of bureaucracy to justify his friend’s choice.

“The Red One” by Rae Carson
From the point of view of the red astromech unit that Uncle Lars initially purchases from the Jawas, we find out more about went on in the sandcrawler, and between this droid and R2D2, and what preceded its fateful malfunction.

“Not For Nothing” by Mur Lafferty
Written in the form of a “Behind the Music” sort of feature that you might read in Rolling Stone or see on VH1, from the point of view of a member of the Modal Nodes band that is playing a the Mos Eisley cantina during the movie.

“Born in the Storm” by Daniel José Older
Written from the point of view of one of the storm troopers sent to Tatooine to look for the droids, and written in the form of an incident report. The irreverent attitude of the storm trooper made this story a lot of fun, and though I was skeptical that he would take such an attitude, it all made sense in the end.

“An Incident Report” by Mallory Ortberg
I think this might be my favorite in the book. After Darth Vader Force-chokes Admiral Motti for insolent comments that the Death Star is all the Empire needs, this story is the incident report Admiral Motti writes up for the Imperial human resources department, a very peevishly toned note complaining about the incident, while trying to make it clear he’s not discriminating on the basis of religion.

The only thing that didn’t quite hit right in the book is that with the density of stories in the Mos Eisley cantina involving the same characters, several of them conflicted with each other, especially around the activities of Greedo and how good of a bounty hunter he actually was. I’m guessing the stories were largely written independently with general guidelines, so the authors didn’t have direct contact, but the only thing off about the book was the clear continuity conflicts revealed there.

This book was a lot of fun, and a unique take on short story collections that took a different angle than any other I’d read before (which is probably only possible with a well known franchise like this). I highly recommend it.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Lego Ninjago Movie

written by David Steffen

The Lego Ninjago movie is a computer animated children’s movie from Warner Bros, released in September 2017. It is in the loosely connected series of Lego movies that include The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie. Similar to those movies, pretty much everything in the movie is made as though it were built out of Lego blocks, and though the movies generally don’t often acknowledge that they are actually toys, it occasionally does (usually for comic effect).

Ninjago Island has, for decades, been terrorized by the monstrous villain Garmadon (Justin Thoreau), who builds fanciful mechs and leads armies of fighters to take over the island. The island’s only defense is a group of ninja heroes who pilot elemental-themed mechs to thwart Garmadon at every turn: Water Ninja (Abbi Jacobson), Ice Ninja (Zach Woods), Earth Ninja (Fred Armisen), Lightning Ninja (Kumail Nanjiani), Fire Ninja (Michael Peña), and their leader: Green Ninja (Dave Franco). The ninja team is secretly a group of high school students trained by Master Wu (Jackie Chan), and the Green Ninja is the second-most despised person in all of Ninjago–Lloyd Garmadon, son of the villain himself. Garmadon wins one of their battles and takes over Ninjago, and the ninja team heads off with Master Wu to begin their training to come back and finish the job.

This is a fun, action-packed movie, but I didn’t think it was as funny as the previous two, which was my main appeal to the series. Garmadon was the highlight of most of the movie for me, had a lot of good lines. With one exception. There is a scene. Where the use of Master Wu’s super secret Ultimate Weapon is revealed. And that alone is worth seeing the movie for. I laughed until I cried. Great moment, perfectly executed, and I am super happy I saw the movie for that scene alone. But, you can’t go wrong with it if you’re looking for an action movie with some comedy.

DP FICTION #44B: “Still Life With Grave Juice” by Jim Moss

“This is the real thing? None of that synth-sludge?”

“Yes, sir. Direct from Earth.”

“And it’s the best you’ve got?” Quincy eyed the glass on the robowaiter’s tray. He should have ordered a bottle. He would need more to help unravel the stress of his turbulent negotiations with the Wattlars, who had rejected yet another contract. At least this outpost had an overpriced restaurant where he could run up his company’s expense account.

“Highest quality and price, I assure you. You may access my Integriport–”

“Yeah, yeah…” Quincy waved his hand, the gesture cue enough for the robowaiter to spit out a coaster which landed on the table with a soft plop. In a ballet of hydraulics, the robowaiter plucked the glass off the tray and set it before Quincy with the exaggerated grace of a suitor presenting a rose.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“You know, on Earth, they pop the cork in front of the patron, so it can be inspected for dryness, and they show the bottle so that–”

“You requested a glass, not an entire bottle,” the robowaiter spun its upper torso away from Quincy and sped off. Quincy held up the glass by the stem, examining its deep burgundy contents by the overhead light. He brought it down below his nose and inhaled.

“Cannibal.”

That word, that accent, the derisive tone — Quincy knew it referred to him. It made the scent of fresh blackberries he just inhaled turn rancid. He turned his head and expelled his breath away from the glass. There, seated the next table over were a pair of Arthruds. Common in this sector, especially at spaceports, they enjoyed a reputation as damn good mechanics despite being an insufferable race of know-it-alls. To Quincy they looked like a cross between an armadillo and a giant bipedal lobster, with outer bodies covered in segmented plates and a second set of arms beneath the first. The adult and child were eating what appeared to be shards of cardboard soaked in neon anti-freeze. The child could not be more than seven molts old. Both bobbed, jostling their plates, which made squeaky noises like balloons being rubbed together. They did this when laughing, or passing judgment, or both. Quincy rolled his eyes, turned away, swirled the glass and inhaled again. He tipped a sip and rolled it around his mouth with his tongue. Yes, yes, blackberries, currant, a touch of clover, anise, oak…

“What is he drinking?” asked the child.

“I believe it is called ‘wine.’ It is a death drink.”

“Will we get to see the Earther die?”

“No.” Squeaky balloon sounds sputtered out of the adult’s body plates. “I meant death as in dead. Wine is made from the dead. As I said, they are cannibals.”

“Should we leave?”

“No, don’t worry. They only eat their own.”

“If another Earther comes along, will they try to eat each other?” The child looked around the restaurant. Quincy moved his wine aside and turned to face the Arthruds. It was one thing for two adults to spout their ignorance, but quite another for an adult to imbue such bigotry on a child.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing…” Quincy stared into the adult’s face trying to lock onto the creature’s three eyes with his own two. “Perhaps you received some faulty information. Earth people are not cannibals.”

“It is well known throughout the galaxy that yours is a cannibalistic race.” The adult met Quincy’s stare, crossing his midarms across his midsection.

“You’re wrong. I don’t know where you heard this propaganda, but it’s false and insulting.”

“On your planet, do you not bury your dead?”

“We bury them, but we don’t eat them.”

The adult raised a plated brow above its top eye and turned to face the child.

“Earthers bury their dead in the ground in graveyards where the bodies decompose. They sow their strange plant life into these yards. The plants send their roots into the soil and suck in the fragments of the dead. Then the plant blooms and bears fruit. Fruit containing bits of the dead. Fruit they then eat.”

“Where are you getting this nonsense? We don’t plant fruit trees in graveyards.” Quincy could feel a vein in his forehead throb. The adult pointed at the glass of wine with the spindly third digit of his upper right claw.

“Is not your ‘wine’ made of grave juice?”

“Ahh! Here’s your confusion. Wine is made from grapes not graves. Grapes are fruit grown in vineyards, not graveyards.” Quincy reached for his glass. The adult raised two plated brows and leaned towards the child.

“The problem, Dewlis, is that Earthers have many words in their languages that mean the same thing. They use these to confuse others about what things really are. When you point out their error, they complain that it was a mis-understanding or a mis-interpretation. Beware when an Earther says ‘mis’.” The adult turned back, his eyes drawn to the vein now bulging on Quincy’s forehead.

“You are not the authority on Earth languages, Mis-ter. What is your name?”

“Spureb. And yours?”

“Quincy. And I’m going to prove you wrong.” Quincy threw his arm out blocking the robowaiter as it attempted to zip between tables. The waiter’s upper torso spun around twice before it stopped to face him.

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell us, waiter,” Quincy held up the wineglass. “What is wine made from?”

“Grapes.”

“And where does this wine come from?”

“Earth, France, the Bordeaux region.”

“St. Emillion? Pomerol?” Quincy took a sip.

“No sir, Graves.” The robowaiter spun back and zipped away.

“Bah Za!” Spureb pointed two digits and a folded claw at Quincy.

“No! Listen, that’s just the name of the region. The waiter mispronounced it. It’s pronounced ‘grahv’ with a short ‘a’. A different vowel sound. It’s French for gravel. It’s the name of a French wine growing region. It has nothing to do with graves. Don’t mistake a vineyard for graveyard.”

“The Earther said ‘mis’ twice!” Dewlis smiled at his father. They bopped in amusement, squeaky laughter reverberating like an orgy of balloon animals.

“Just stop and listen!” Quincy pounded the table. “A vineyard is a yard where grapes grow, a graveyard is a–”

“They are both ‘yards’ then, a measured plot of land, yes?” Spureb created a square using his four arms.

“Yes, but—”

“Yet you pronounce the ‘yard’ in vineyard as ‘yerd’. A different vowel sound. Is this a mispronunciation?”

“Uh… no, because, uh…”

“So yard is a word pronounced two ways, but means the same thing.” Dewlis said. “Like ‘grahv’ and ‘grave’.”

“No! They are two different things” Quincy threw his hands up, then grabbed his wineglass and poured a gulp into his mouth. “You know, even if a vineyard was planted on top of a dead body, we don’t eat dead flesh directly, so we’re not cannibals.”

“Suppose they are two different plots of land, as you say.” Spureb sat back in his chair and clacked the digits of his upper claws together. “You still contaminate your soil with your dead. If an insect eats a leaf from a plant in your ‘graveyard’ then flies into a ‘vineyard’ and dies in the soil and the vin plants eat the soil with the dead insect, then you eat the fruit of vin plants – you have eaten pieces of your dead.”

“No. Because what I’ve really eaten is molecular compounds. Someone dies, they’re buried, they decay. Maybe a bug eats some of it. When the bug dies it decays into simpler molecules, water, proteins, amino acids. So a plant uses these nutrients and produces fruit that someone may eat. So what? Everything gets recycled. Broken down and recycled. It’s the nature of the universe.”

“That may be the nature of your planet, but not the universe.”

“Oh yeah? What do you do with your dead?”

“Our dead become art. That is the proper way to honor them.”

“Art?”

“My great ahdmah won the Op Culbet for her work on great pahdah,” said Dewlis.

“He’s hanging in the Brachalach, our finest museum.” Spureb tapped his claw on his chest plate. “And what a stunning piece he is. Great ahdmah bent his spine into a semi-circle and beneath this, draped the flesh of his pale underbelly. Over this setting moon motif, she sprinkled the glittering shards of his shattered neck plate. His top abdomen is broken open and from the center, triangular strips of muscle are strung outwards in all directions like a blazer blossom. Here, his left claw, stained in ochre bile, is curled in a fetal ball. The fourth digit, bent impossibly backwards, protrudes like a stamen. And no matter where you move to look, that digit seems to follow you. His head top hangs upside down strung from a series of tendons like a rain basket that… Bah! I’m talking to a flabedah!” Spureb threw three of his arms up in the air.

“A flabedah?”

“That’s Arthruder for uh… you have no word in your language. It means someone who does not understand or appreciate what art does for a soul.”

“Uh huh.”

“Ah! I forget. You Earthers believe the soul leaves the body after the body is no longer self-animating.” Spureb flailed his four arms and swayed back and forth.

“That’s silly!” Dewlis squeaked a series of chuckles. “Soul is made of body. How can soul leave body? Silly!”

“Dewlis, this is what Earthers believe.” Spureb cooed in sing-song. “We should not ridicule their beliefs.”

“Ha!” Quincy plunked his glass on the coaster. “You cut up bodies to make rain buckets. So you chop up souls.”

“The soul may be divided, but it is not separated. It is recombined with the body into a more appealing form of art. Most souls find it agreeable.”

“And how do you know they find it agreeable?”

“In the silent hours if we stand before our ancestors and relax our minds we can hear their voices whisper to us.”

“Zul Ahdmah whispers to me,” said Dewlis.

“Yes, she tells you to stop slumping so much.”

“No, she tells me I am entitled to extra Kerzyhisses, for I will molt large.”

“She does not. You are only imagining that.”

“Yeah, you creatures molt,” said Quincy. “You drop off chunks of body parts. What happens to the soul of those parts? You couldn’t possibly save every single— “

“We re-ingest them. That’s what we’re eating right now.” Spureb speared a boiled body plate with his fork. “We eat only our own souls, not others’, thank you.”

“I don’t like the taste of my lower abdomen,” said Dewlis.

“Well, you better eat it, or you’ll be incomplete and never get displayed in a good museum.”

“What do you do when your art decays?” Quincy tossed a gulp of wine into his mouth.

“It does not decay. It is all how-you-say — varnished. We are not primitives that allow our dead to decay into pieces that end up in the food supply and get mixed in with other souls and eaten and—”

“Is that why his abdomen is so large?” Dewlis pointed his claw at Quincy’s belly. Quincy silently cursed the station’s greater-than-earth gravity, which made him heavier, compressed his breath and pulled his belly downwards, causing him look flabbier than he really was.

“Yes,” said Spureb. “That is where they collect. No soul, even a piece of soul, wants to be expelled as waste.”

“Alright, look, my… stoutness has nothing to do with souls in my body. Extra weight is caused by fat cells that accumulate because… Look, it’s not souls, OK?” Quincy’s grip tightened on the glass.

“You bury your dead in the ground, your plant life eats from this ground, breaking up souls and—”

“Your information is ancient. Burial is hardly done on our planet anymore. Real estate is too expensive. It’s more common that we cremate our dead.” Quincy twirled the wineglass by its stem. He felt tingly; the alcohol must be kicking in. He sat back and sighed, expecting another round of squeaks.

“Cremate?” Dewlis turned to his father.

“Cream is a white goo.” Spureb’s face plates shifted out of symmetry. “Earthers whip it up and serve it on their desserts.”

“No! That’s not what it is!” Quincy bolted upright.

“Cream-ate… ’Ate’ means that they’ve eaten it!”

“No, no, no! In cremation the body is burned into ashes.”

“What do you do with the ashes?” Spureb’s voice was low, his neck sunk into his upper torso.

“Scatter them in the wind.” Quincy turned away, took a gulp of wine, and clenched his fists expecting another round of squeaks. But the Arthruds were silent, the only sound, the grinding of Quincy’s teeth. Quincy turned back to find Spureb staring at him, eye plates askew, breathing hole frozen open. Dewlis turned to his father.

“Pahdah?”

“Millions of Earthers die every year on your planet.” Spureb’s eye plates pinched together and his ears recoiled into their sockets. He held his upper claws close to his chest. “Your atmosphere is full of corpse dust. Your populace breathes in burned up pieces of souls!”

“That’s enough!” Quincy pounded his arm on the table and rose from his seat. “There are no…” He paused to catch his breath. “Souls in… dust!”

“Pahdah, the Earther is breathing funny.”

“He appears to be experiencing withdrawal. Not enough soul dust in this atmosphere for his cannibal addiction. Perhaps the grave juice isn’t enough.”

“You… No… Uh…” Quincy sputtered, struggling for balance, the tingling in his arm growing painful.

“He just spit dead Earther juice at my head!”

“Move back, Dewlis. I don’t understand what is happening. He may have angered the souls he has consumed by denying their existence.”

“You puchh… you achh…” Quincy grabbed at the table with his right arm.

“Look how red he glows.” Dewlis stared at Quincy’s face.

“He is blushing. Earthers do this when they have embarrassed themselves.” Spureb leaned in to whisper to Dewlis. “It may not be proper for us to view his shame, let us look away.”

Spureb and Dewlis turned their backs on Quincy. They heard a thud and waited a couple of minutes to allow Quincy’s fit of shame to pass before turning back.

***

“And he died, right there.”

“How awful,” said Kerlew, a lovely female Arthrud that had stopped by Spureb’s garage to pick up a replacement part for a centrifuge. Spureb led her on a tour, casually watching her shuffle along the corridor and smiling as she eyed his collection of shiny metal plates and polished tubes.

“The staff tried to reset-animate him by pulling his merry-cardio muscle, but they were so incompetent, they pushed instead of pulled. Apparently, his heart was attacked by his massive coronary gland. ”

“Such strange physiology.”

“Terribly awkward situation. Nearest relative some twenty light-years away, employer in debt due to careless expense management, neither willing to pay for transport. And you know Earthers – they would have just expelled him into space.”

“Barbaric.”

“And despite his hubris and ignorance, he was amusing and we did feel sorry for him. We told the authorities we’d take him, and so, there he is.” Spureb waved his two left arms towards a corner in his garage gallery.

“Aja! Fantastic. Do their legs really twist like that?”

“No, that’s Spiasoc’s explication. He was able to make the tissue flexible through plastination. A preservation used on Earth during a brief enlightened period when–”

“You got Spiasoc?” Kerlew’s eyes widened with interest.

“Yes.” Spureb crossed his four arms over his torso and arched his back to raise his top segment just a little. “Spiasoc is quite eager to break convention with work on other xenophylum.” Spureb turned to look at Quincy and smiled.

Quincy’s body sat on a pedestal made of his leg bones. The flesh of his boneless legs, peeled in long ribbons and twined with muscle and tendon, spiraled in a double helix down to the floor. Thin slices of his brain, stained green, were attached along these vines; the flat sides of each angled upward, seeking light. The skin of his mid-section was shorn away. His intestines, flattened, dyed brown and cut into three by eight slats were arranged to form his torso into a barrel. Deflated lungs protruded from his back in a V spread, mottled fairy wings insufficient for his bulk. His arms burst out between slats, left switched for right with elbows bent backwards. One hand reached towards barrel bottom for a dangling spigot, while the other held up the aorta stem of a goblet carved from his heart. Quincy’s neck stretched out from barrel top, his crimson colored Adam’s apple rupturing through the middle. Above his furrowed brow, the top of his head was sliced off and thrown back like a jar lid. In the open skull, a helter-skelter tower built of brain matter cubes rose toward the ceiling, looking as if it might collapse at the faintest wayward breath. Quincy’s dead eyes stared at the goblet tipped towards his mouth. The pureed burgundy of his liver spilled over the goblet’s rim forming a long droplet that hung frozen in mid air. His tongue, stretched through parted blue lips, strained to reach the glistening drop, but only succeeded in tightening the knot at its center.

“Such an honor for the Earther,” said Kerlew.

“He finds it agreeable.”

Jim Moss is a videographer and a playwright. His plays have been produced Off-Broadway in New York, and in theatres in Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and London. His play, Tagged, was a winner of the 2018 British Theatre Challenge. Still Life With Grave Juice is his first published short story.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Boss Baby

written by David Steffen

The Boss Baby is a 2017 computer animated comedy/action film produced by Dreamworks Animation, released in March 2017.

Where do babies come from? Nope, not where you think. They come from a factory, (shown in the opening credits of the movie), an assembly line producing seemingly endless babies. Most of them fit all of the standard characteristics expected of babies, and those babies are all shipped off to live with familes. But occasionally one comes down the line that just doesn’t fit the mold, doesn’t do what’s expected of babies such as laughing when tickled, and those babies… are management material.

Seven-year-old Tim Templeton (Miles Bakshi, with adult version narrator as Toby Maguire) is the only kid of two busy but loving parents, and he doesn’t want anything to change. But one day he sees a baby wearing a business suit exiting a taxi outside the house, and when he runs downstairs to see what’s going on, his parents announce he has a new baby brother. Something weird is going on here, at first it seems like a normal baby, as disrupting as that can be on its own, but when other babies visit for a playdate Tim catches the baby leading a business meeting and the jig is up. The baby is known only as Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin) and he works for a company called Baby Corp who give their employees a special formula that keeps that in the shape of a baby but with the mind of a human as long as they keep drinking it regularly. Boss Baby has been assigned to the Templeton family because Mr. (Jimmy Kimmel) and Mrs. Templeton (Lisa Kudrow) work for Puppy Co, Boss Corp’s biggest competitor (with “love” being the currency the two companies run on, apparently?). If Tim wants to get his house back to normal, he’s got to help Boss Baby complete his mission so that he can be called back to the corporation.

I can see why this would be a hit with kids. I realize I’m not the demographic this was aimed at, but, well, if you don’t enjoy overexamining children’s entertainment, you may as well stop reading now. For what it’s worth, I love a lot of kid’s movies, and when it comes to movies in general I am not generally a very harsh judge; there are many kids movies I love to itty-bitty pieces. This was an interesting idea, if rather convoluted and based on patchy worldbuilding (where does Baby Corp’s money come from?). I found Boss Baby more than a little bit annoying, in large part because he is exactly the model of an irritating stereotypical middle management type that doesn’t care about people and just wants to elevate his status in the company. This made him very hard to relate to. Not that the viewer was supposedly to relate to Boss Baby, but while it is a bit funny to have a baby spouting middle management aphorisms, I didn’t think it was enough to build a feature length film from.

Tim was much more relatable (purposefully so) but his entire fight just seemed futile to me, perhaps because I saw the inciting incident as largely metaphorical–it seems like he’s making up an elaborate fantasy world in order to justify the new disruption to his life, but, I hate to break it to you kid, if your parents have a baby brother you can’t just make him go away by completing a quest. The movie was about halfway over before I was reasonably convinced that any of this was actually happening and not metaphorical. This was confused more by some of the ways the movie showed briefly the parent’s point of view, especially in a dangerous high speed toy car chase scene in the back yard where when we see it from Tim’s point of view, but from the parents the baby is barely moving in his pedal car–if that was apparently incredibly exaggerated, then what else was too?

I love a lot