1. Raid the army surplus warehouse, NASA’s scrapyard, and Aunt Diabolica’s volcano lair for parts. On the way home, swing by CatCo to buy more Fancy Feast for Mr. Wibbles.
2. Let your imagination soar as you plot your evil heart out. Ask yourself: What am I most upset about? Did Rodney Gruber laugh at you in high school? Are you mad that no one appreciates pigeons? Perhaps you want to overthrow the government, but stylishly, in a cool hat. You’ll want to build your device to achieve those goals. Bonus points for thematic resonance, like maybe your device arms pigeons with crouton-shooting machine guns so they can pelt condescending tourists with stale bread.
3. Settle on the environment as your pet cause. Who isn’t pissed about climate change? And since everyone’s technically responsible for it, you don’t have to feel bad about any effects on bystanders. And with Arbor Day around the corner, the timing couldn’t be better.
Once you’ve got your cause, invent the Johnny Applebeam! One sweep of its Honeycrisp ray turns humans into apple trees on contact.
Everyone always overlooks Arbor Day. This year, you’ll give them something to remember.
4. Work on your signature catchphrase. “How do you like THEM apples!” has a nice ring to it. Or maybe “It’s cobblering time!” Whatever you pick, make it rotten to the core.
5. Now it’s time for add-ons! Comfy seats! Stylish bitey dragon teeth and glowing red eyes! A nozzle that hoovers the apples from the people-trees and turns them into cider! A cannon that pelts your enemies with land piranhas! How about an extra cockpit seat for Mr. Wibbles, complete with a little silver bowl for his Fancy Feast? And hey, those crouton-wielding attack pigeons were a good idea—add a few of those!
An Emergency Override button sounds nice, but opinions are mixed on its usefulness. Murphy’s Law dictates that if you install one, someone will eventually use it against you. You might be better off without it.
6. Now that you’ve built your doomsday device, take it out for a spin! Your high school is a great place to start, and Arbor Day has arrived. Savor Rodney Gruber’s blubbering as you sweep the Johnny Applebeam over his smug bully face. You’ve just eliminated 890,000 pounds of lifetime carbon emissions, and all before it’s time to feed Mr. Wibbles.
It sure feels good to do some good!
7. Great job on your first rampage! Celebrate by sipping that crisp, cool cider made from Rodney Gruber’s freshly picked apples. Revenge, as they say, tastes sweet.
8. While you’re polishing smashed apples off the Johnny Applebeam, panic when the dragon eyes flare to life. Someone’s tripped the auto-rampage button inside the cockpit.
Realize in all the excitement that you forgot to feed Mr. Wibbles.
9. Regret that you never installed that Emergency Override button.
Mr. Wibbles is in charge now.
God save you. God save us all.
10. Enjoy your new life as a planet-saving carbon sink! You no longer have to worry about Rodney Gruber or climate change, and those attack pigeons will eventually run out of croutons. And you can’t help but be proud of Mr. Wibbles for making history as the first cat to appear on the International Most Wanted Criminals list.
It’s a shame Mr. Wibbles is still hungry, though. If there’s any victim in this nasty business, surely it’s him. What use does a cat have for apples, after all? Trees are nice, but it would sure motivate Mr. Wibbles to reach deep down for his criminal worst if you could retool the beam to make cat food instead. In such a brave new world lacking opposable thumbs with which to operate the can opener, the only right thing to do is to turn over a new leaf and guarantee a future jam-packed with delicate bites for your fuzzy little guy.
Sooner or later, you’ll solve the whole tree thing, perhaps when Aunt Diabolica comes looking for you when she notices what you stole from her volcano lair. These things always have a way of working themselves out. Until then, you’ve got your branches full planning your next rampage.
Next Arbor Day, you’ll have all the Fancy Feast you need.
Author’s Note: This story began life as an entry to a weekend flash fiction challenge I do every year, and eventually became about my true feelings around Arbor Day. I hope it inspires readers everywhere to show more respect to pigeons, and to eat apples responsibly.
Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Rachael is a World Fantasy Award nominee and Tiptree Award honoree, and her fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and dozens of venues worldwide. Her stories can be found in Uncanny, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and all four Escape Artists podcasts. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones or Bluesky @rachaelkjones.bsky.social
At this age, on the planet of Orvalho, Alberto is conjoined with the ship called The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds. They’re engulfed in the Mezelões’ unifying mix, a tank where a swirling brackish secretion flows through their pores and recesses, nanoscopic spidery bots tying their espírito together—parts and limbs, yottabytes and nucleotides, ship and captain, physically separated, spiritually united.
When they leave the tank, dripping dark goo, crying and whirring, they have become one, bound to each other.
Alberto is a child: gaunt, dark-skinned, green-eyed; born to be a captain. He’ll soon contest that, like all the people who are born and bound to be anything by those who came before them.
The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds is a ship: silvery, slender, streamlined; born to be an offer. It looks like a toy—for Alberto, it is one, though he’ll soon stop seeing it that way. It’s a tiny spaceship with a prow; dronelike, smaller than a goose. When charged, the engine it was born with lets it cross from the kitchen to the garden without needing extra fusion cells.
Weeks after crying in despair in the Mezelões’ labs, Alberto shyly learns to giggle into the loneliness of his wide bedroom, constructed to give space to child and ship. In between visits from his allocated guardians, Alberto learns to play with The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds. He taps its gleaming hull and the ship hurtles through the bedroom. When the window is open, it swishes out and returns many minutes later, dripping on rainy days, sizzling on the hot ones. Alberto calls it Offy. At night, Alberto learns to smile at Offy, but never to kiss it good night. No one has taught him about kisses. Offy turns down its engines so Alberto can sleep. Turns them down, that is, until it learns that Alberto prefers its whirs and hums, and the soft white lights of its protruding mole-like bridge.
.10.
At this age, Alberto resents every time he hears the Mezelões calling Offy by other names—”The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds”, “a nurturing investment”, “the shot at peace for the galaxy”, “a gift for the enemy”. For Alberto, it’ll always be Offy. Offy can’t express it yet—its mindstream system isn’t fully grown—but it can feel Alberto’s annoyance when grownups call him “little captain”, “brother of the offer”, “bringer of peace”. For Alberto, the word ‘brother’ seems misplaced, and one day he’ll understand why.
Offy is bigger than a tricycle now and growing every day, its gobbling drive devouring the raw material the guardians leave for it—steel, titanium, magnesium, and an entire bevy of alloys and mixtures carefully nurtured for ship growth. Alberto barely fits inside, occupying most of its payload. He’s free to fly it, his guardians say, though they’re still bounded by the limits of the Captain’s Dome, which comprises his bedroom and the guardians’ annex. Alberto hates limits. He wants to break away from Orvalho and fly to the twinkling stars, home of a hundred races, of a thousand planets, of a million cities. The grownups say he’ll be able to go wherever he wants one day, when he’s captain, when The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds is fully matured.
On some nights, Alberto has nightmares. In them, he’s back in the Mezelões’ tanks. But instead of a union, he’s being separated from Offy, with freezing, brackish goo pouring out of his body. He cries, restless, trying to swim, looking for Offy. But before he finds it, Offy—the real one, from the waking world—flies closer to him, whirring a bit louder. It’s only then Alberto knows he won’t drown.
.15.
At this age, Alberto’s guardians give Offy its first hangar. It’s a spacious building outside the Captain’s Dome, reeking of oil, iron, and disinfectant. Offy is still only a dot inside it, the size of two trucks, but its mindstream system is grown now. The first words it conveys to Alberto are: “I want to fly higher.”
“You will,” Alberto whispers, cheeks plastered against Offy’s hull. “We will.”
Alberto’s free now, the guardians tell him, and he can fly Offy whenever he wants. Offy, however, is leashed. It pains Alberto when he finds out about the coercive routine they have installed to prevent Offy from traveling further than Orvalho’s orbit. After five nights with Offy mindstreaming its data to Alberto, he learns how to override it.
.16.
At this age, Alberto identifies one of the many things that bother him. She hates to be called “he”. Offy realizes one thing as well. They hate to be called “it”.
Offy now has a set of skintight suits for EVA activities, a small rover, and a robust sub-light engine that performs at 0.001c. So Alberto breaks the rules and flies Offy to Beirão, Orvalho’s biggest moon. There, she wears a suit and walks out. She does things she always wanted: hop in the moon’s weak gravity; allow her feet to leave marks on the regolith; stare at the pearlescent surface of Orvalho for an hour. Finally, she talks. With their nose pointing up, Offy listens.
“I know what you are, what you were created to be. An offer of peace. You’re to be given to the Indaleões so the war between them and the Mezelões, two centuries long, can finally end. They bred you through me, tied our espíritos, because that’s the only way a ship can be. But they don’t mean for us to stay together like conjoined captains are supposed to. No, they’ll separate us so you can be a gift to some other people. Your own name means that. Then they’ll use you in their exhibitions or worse—forcefully tie you to a new captain. It will be painful for you and for me. They know it too, but they don’t care. Offy… I don’t intend to let that happen.”
But then, how many things have to happen, irrespective of what one wants?
.20.
At this age, Alia and Offy have their first fight. It is hardly an even match; in the last few years, as acne pockmarked Alia’s cheeks, Offy grew their core weapons—two laser cannons, an electron beam, internal coupled guns, and a series of hull turrets. But they turn none of it against Alia, even though she scowls at them, seething, thrashing the bridge’s comm panels and terminals, trying uselessly to crack their glass panes. Eventually, she surrenders and crashes into a couch, weeping and bristling as she absorbs everything Offy has mindstreamed to her. Offy wants to leave. Of their own accord, they want to go and explore the galaxy on their own.
When Alia tries to infiltrate Offy’s code and override it—like she did so many times to invisibly counter the Mezelões’ meddling—a terrible wind knocks her to the ground, and in strong gusts flowing along Offy’s corridors, it swooshes her away through an airlock. She stumbles out into the hangar as Offy activates their drive and flies away.
She’s left incomplete.
.22.
At this age, Alia lives alone in a shipping container with three ore miners. Without The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds, she’s no longer a captain, no longer relevant to the Mezelões. Her guardians of childhood, once all smiles and gifts and kind words, are never to be seen again.
The fact that The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds fled doesn’t mean they lost their conjoined espíritos. Instead, it means Alia lost part of her soul. She lives restlessly. Day after day, she’s wearier, gaunter, her eyes drooping, her hair falling. She obsesses over the ship’s operation logs, streaming them over and over in her mind. And, one day, barely eating anymore, she finally decrypts a set of logs from their last days together. The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds didn’t leave because they wanted to be free—as they had every right to want—but because they feared Alia would suffer, or even be disposed of, when Offy had to finally become an offer to the Indaleões.
Alia decides to draw momentum and energy from the logs, like a fusion drive thirsty for deuterium. She hitchhikes on an ore miner, then hops to a rock trawler, crosses warp gates between systems. She lives off begging, and degrading jobs, and stealing. All the while, searching for the signature of The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds—Offy; their name is Offy.
.24.
At this age, she does find Offy. Using a rock trawler’s detection system, yes, but she also feels it somewhere within her, her espírito bubbling up. Something clicks within her, like a puzzle piece falling into place.
Offy’s orbiting a gas giant, their hull reflecting a dismal blueish light. Around them, five Mezelões blastships order Offy’s surrender. Alia watches it all from the rock trawler’s skiff she stole, zooming on the battle scene, listening to public broadcasts being transmitted from within the fray. It’s the first time she sees Offy using their weapons and she takes pride in their use: the electron beam ripping off the Mezelões’ hulls, the turrets exploding their skiffs and drones. And as she finds strength in seeing Offy again, they find it nurturing to feel Alia once more, less than 1 AU off. That’s when Offy uses their laser cannons at full potential and disintegrates the remaining Mezelões ships.
When they reunite, it’s like finding a rose intact on a bloody battlefield.
.27.
At this age, rebels die. Alia doesn’t. She’s the first of the Mezelões’ captains to defect. With Offy, she spends her time hopping from system to system as Offy’s camouflage system grows and their gobbling drive feeds off any matter it can find on asteroids and rocky planets. They finally reach their full size, large enough to house 3,000 people—room for every soldier in the Indaleões’ primary fleet. But Offy needs no one but Alia to control its subsystems, from the churning particles of the budding FTL drive to the life support system’s sighs of oxygen. And the pair travel through the galaxy, their only aim, to be anything but a captain and to be anything but an offer, ignoring all the broadcasts the Mezelões direct at them: you can’t be.
.30.
At this age, the duo is the most valuable asset in the galaxy. In the eyes of the Mezelões, Offy is a fully-formed offer, but it’s more than that. Their separation and eventual reunion made Offy develop faster than expected. Their hull has grown another layer of titanium; their FTL drive, usually fully developed only at 60 years from conjoining, is almost at its prime; their weapons offer twice as much firepower as a similar ship would at this age.
And in the Mezelões’ eyes, Alia, despite being a rebel and a wanted woman, is a splendid captain, capable of controlling—though Alia hates the word—all of Offy’s systems with mere slivers of mindstreamed thoughts, without needing to couple herself to chairs and machinery like other captains.
And that’s why they’re chased. Their life becomes fleeing, surviving, hiding in the solitary caves of unexplored moons, orbiting uncharted gas giants, free-floating in the blackness of interstellar space. At times, Alia finds herself disguised, roaming the infinite streets of ultra-dense cities, disappearing amongst ten billion citizens. Offy finds themself changing their drive signature and exhaust patterns day after day. Offy develops a factory of replicating bots and, with the bots’ help, learns to shapeshift. One day, they look like a cigarette. Another day, they’re in the form of a turtle swimming across the void.
One of those days, Alia and Offy wonder if they’re forever.
.45.
At this age, light becomes slower. Offy develops a fully-formed FTL drive. Though at this point, Alia and Offy don’t see each other as conjoined entities anymore. They’re simply one, and they call themself Alyof.
Going faster than light, Alyof can reach other galaxies, transforming the Mezelões, the Indaleões, and their pitiful skirmish into something as irrelevant as a molecule lost in the vacuum. Some of their most formidable ships, conjoined with their wisest and oldest captains, can still reach them. But not many dare to defy Alyof anymore. By now, they have a plethora of planet-wrecking weapons that no ship has ever achieved. Alyof becomes a mere anomalous curiosity, a feature of space to be observed and respected from a distance, like a quasar.
.85.
At this age, Alyof learns they’re not invincible. Not because the Mezelões develop a fleet to chase Alyof, although they do and they’re utterly destroyed; not because a race of vacuum-traveling stingrays tries to absorb Alyof into their being, although they do and they’re repelled. But because their espírito can still break.
What was once Alia longs for rest. Tethered to the bridge by a cobweb of flesh, what was once Alia wheezes, coughs, and dozes off. At times, what was once Alia misses things it would never believe it would miss: the soft bedsheets of a bedroom; a cup of coffee in a silent cantina; a walk to an observation deck to watch a terraformed forest slowly growing; the touch of someone’s hand.
What was once Offy longs for more. It wants to explore the corners of the universe, to know, to learn, to never cease to be. At times, what was once Offy longs for things it would never believe it would long for: to fly closer to black holes, to visit the frontiers of the known universe, to observe species evolving from their puddles to their pyramids.
For what was once Alia, what was once Offy becomes a weight.
For what was once Offy, what was once Alia becomes a tumor.
In the end, Alyof realizes they can’t be.
And this is how a spirit breaks: on a chalky, cold planet, Alyof expels Alia from their guts and becomes Offy again. Naked and wrinkly, gasping, with fleshy knobs hanging from her body, Alia curls on the ground, dwarfed by Offy like a discarded offer given to a deserted world. She raises a hand to them but has to close her eyes.
Alia never sees when Offy turns into a blue dot in the sky. She feels something in her chest that she mistakes for pain, but it’s only longing for what was once part of her.
.1,263.
At this age and every age beyond that, Offy travels. Cruising between two galaxies a thousand times faster than light, Offy listens to one who was once part of them. Offy knows they’ll never be whole again, but they can pretend. The reconstructed voice talks through their speakers and writes to their logs in a rough imitation of mindstreaming processes.
“I’m still afraid I’ll have to die one day and leave you,” the voice says. “My body is not like yours.”
Offy whirs a bit louder so that unreal part of them knows they can’t drown and they can be.
Author’s Note: The idea of a deep relationship between a spaceship and its captain has been on my mind for a long while. I’ve published a story of a man who tethers himself to an FTL drive, but I also thought of something far deeper than that, more organic. Then I came up with this idea of a society of captains that are conjoined with their spaceships and whose relationship needs to thrive for the spaceship to fully mature. But as with all relationships, it has its price.
Renan Bernardo is a science fiction and fantasy writer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His fiction appeared in or is forthcoming from Tor.com, Apex Magazine, PodCastle, Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, Samovar, Solarpunk Magazine, and others. His writing scope is broad, from secondary-world fantasy to dark science fiction, but he enjoys the intersection of climate narratives with science, technology, and the human relations inherent to it. His solarpunk/cli-fi short fiction collection, Different Kinds of Defiance (Android Press) is forthcoming on March 26th, 2024. His fiction has also appeared in multiple languages, including German, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese.
Compiled by Hal Y. Zhang, with assistance from Chelle Parker and David Steffen
This has been a memorable year for the Hugo Awards. For the last eight years, Diabolical Plots has produced an annual volume of stories from the longer list of nomination statistics: The Long List Anthology. The project started in another memorable year, with the intent of bringing attention to more of the works favored in those nomination statistics, with the primary goal of giving those authors a boost in readership, and that effort has been successful, as those anthologies are still finding new readers every year.
The longer nomination list is traditionally published within hours of the end of the Hugo Awards ceremony at WorldCon. This time, the list was published three months after the ceremony, in January 2024, and that was the least of the departures from the norm for the awards. We aren’t going to rehash all of those details here, but you can read up on some of the controversy over at Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine.
With all of the complications of this year’s nomination list, Diabolical Plots has decided not to produce a new volume of the Long List Anthology this year. We do still want to help boost readership for the amazing authors involved, however, so in lieu of the anthology, we have done our best to compile the most comprehensive list of links to the works from this year’s Short Story and Novelette categories that we could.
Works in this list have been organized alphabetically by author name (romanized in the case of Chinese authors). Please note that not all stories have English translations, and that we have used the translated titles provided by the Hugo Awards administrators for those that do not, which are marked with an asterisk. If anyone knows of translations, either Chinese to English or English to Chinese, for any of the stories on this list that we’ve missed, please let us know.
—David
Best Short Story Finalists and Long List
《2039: 脑机时代》/ “2039: Era of Brain-Computer Interface” by 阿缺 / A Que
This story appeared in both the Short Story and Novelette categories in the nomination statistics. We weren’t able to find its character or word count, so we made a choice as to placement. We’re happy to amend this if we receive better information.
“Destiny Delayed” / 《迟到的命运颂歌》 by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Content note (click for details)Content note: This story contains depictions of risks to a child’s safety.
Usually Friend gives me three food pouches after sportsgames, but today only one. He spits it out of his chest slot, and I kick off the bulkhead to snatch it before it gets caught in that jumble of wires over by the vents. When I grab the nearest handhold and swivel in the air for the next one to come, Friend just floats there with his slot closed and his metal arms at his sides.
“Did I do wrong parameters?” I ask.
“Naw, Graciela,” says Friend. “You were grumper to the leez! You sealed your suit with no mistakes, and you dodged all the obstacles on the course. Nineteenth time in a row!”
“If I was grumper to the leez, how come one pouch?” I say. “I’m not a four-year-old anymore.”
“You made enough power on the wheel for almost three hours of XPs! Let’s go play!” says Friend, even though Home would say it’s time for plant care.
“How come one pouch?” I ask again.
“We’ll get more later,” he says, like it’s not a big deal. “You made it to Level 48 last night, remember? Don’t you want to see what happens when you finally connect that switch?”
“No! I did the sportgames and I get the pouches. Fru, and Veg, and Prot! This is just”—I turn over the one pouch—”Veg-9! That’s the worst one!”
“It isn’t so bad.”
“Veg-9 is yuck like a poop smell!” I throw the pouch back at Friend, who catches it fast as a blink. “I’m not proud of you!” I yell at him. “You are not doing great jobs. I’m going to talk to Nurse.”
***
I wish Nurse could give me a hug like she used to, but she had to go into the walls when Friend came. The striped cushions of her body were always warm and smelled like the old CNDY pouches.
I miss CNDY pouches.
I miss Nurse.
Home always says no waste, so the nursery is just another plant-care room now. The round bulge of the baby-growing machine has bottles taped all over, and each one has its own little spinach plant to water. Metal crates stuffed up with kale are bolted to the wall so you can hardly see the smiley sun and the rainbow and the kids holding hands. Before all the plants, whenever Nurse saw me looking at that picture, she would close my hand in her three fabric fingers to practice for being a big sister.
But I’m not a big sister, even though I’m all the way five.
Nurse’s old charging pod is a compost bin now. I dig in the stinky dirt while I tell her about Friend.
“You should apologize, Tender Shoot,” Nurse says from the speaker above the embryo racks. Friend made me a snuggle pillow out of Nurse’s fabric when he came and Nurse left. I keep it up there by her speaker and pretend she’s still there for real.
“But why is Friend doing this?” I ask.
“Rationing has commenced, Graciela,” she says.
“What’s a commence?”
“A beginning.”
“A beginning of what?”
***
It’s really commencing here.
It’s been a whole ten-sleep, and my tummy is making sounds like when Friend boots up. Am I turning into a person like Friend? Will I wake up tomorrow with a slot in my chest for shooting out food pouches?
“I’m too tired for sportsgames today,” I say, when he finds me in my secret hiding place behind the air scrubber.
“Not sportsgames. Something new. Some place new.”
I know every single place in Home. There is no new. Unless… “The No-No Door?”
Friend nods his rectangle head. “First, you need your suit.”
***
Nurse said once that if I ever went through the No-No Door, I’d be hurt worse than anything. When the door slides open, my heart bumps so hard that it shakes the temperature control panel on the chest of my suit. It’s just a small room in there, though, with another door. Is that the real No-No Door?
“You are grumper to the leez, Graciela Han Portuga,” says Friend, through the helmet commie. “And I am proud of you.” He throws me something. I catch it just as the No-No Door closes between us.
“Friend!” I shout.
“Your mission is beginning, Graciela,” says Friend, and it’s the exact words that start the XPs. The same boomy voice, even, not Friend’s normal jokey way of talking. I look down at the multitool in my hand, and that’s the same, too: three types of screwdriver, a knife, a wire-cutter, and a pen weldie.
“It’s just like the XPs!” I say. The little room I’m in is where you go when you lose your hearts and have to start over. “Is it the same outside, too?”
“Find out,” says Friend.
Popping open the control panel to unlock the door is easy, but I have to wedge my feet against the bulkhead and push with my legs just to grind the door open a single bit. A sliver of light shines out into the darkness.
I keep pushing.
My breath is fogging up my helmet by the time I can see what’s there.
The short passageway ends in jagged metal and floating wires. Past the hole is a stretch of Deep Dark and another passageway just as messed up.
I can’t see, but I know where it leads: a giant spaceship busted all apart. It’s broken and empty and dangerous, but you can fix it bit by bit if you’re careful.
That’s my job. For real. Not just in a game.
I feel like I’m back to being four again. Or maybe even three.
“You’re not coming with me?” I ask Friend through my helmet.
“Home, Nurse, Me, we have one job: to raise new humans. We’re not designed for out there. But you, Graciela, your parameters are not so limited. Step by step, you will fix it. And the more you fix, the more humans we can make. And when they are old enough, they can help you.”
“But what happens if I lose all my hearts?”
“Don’t,” says Friend.
That one word makes me scareder even than before. I look out the opening in the door, and all I see in that passageway is the different ways to lose hearts. You can rip your suit on the sharp metal. You can get shocked with the wires. You can jump wrong and float away into the Deep Dark. You can run out of air in your tank.
“Tender Shoot?” comes Nurse’s voice in my helmet commie.
She’s never talked through my helmet commie before, and I turn to look. All I see is that empty little room. An airlock: that’s what they call it in the XPs.
“We’ll be right here with you the whole time,” says Nurse, “like we’re holding hands.”
“All you gotta do right now,” says Friend, “is start at the beginning.”
I turn back to the open door. The beginning is always the same: you’ve got to find better tools for fixing.
“Level One,” I whisper. “Blowtorch.”
“Blowtorch,” agrees Friend. “I’ll be waiting back here when you find it. I saved you a CNDY pouch.”
“Level One: Blowtorch” was written in January 2022, when my youngest son was a toddler. For Christmas, we bought him this little rectangle-headed robot that talked, sang, and rolled back and forth on its tracks. One of the things it said was “Hello, Friend!” Naturally, my son simply called it ‘Friend’.
At first, this struck me as delightful, but the more he spoke of ‘Friend’ like this, the more I realized that, as a kid born square in the middle of 2020 Covid restrictions, his entire conception of the word was tied up in that little robot. This story grew out of the complex emotions that evoked, along with a dose of fear for what lies outside the doors of all our personal airlocks and the courage it takes to step through them.
Jared Oliver Adams lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he writes, explores, and dabbles in things better left alone. He holds two degrees in music performance, a third degree in elementary education, and is utterly incapable of passing a doorway without checking to see if it leads to Narnia. Find him online at www.jaredoliveradams.com.
Diabolical Plots is bidding a fond farewell to Kel Coleman, who is stepping down from their position on the editorial team to pursue rest, as well as other creative endeavors.
For those who don’t know, our working relationship with Kel started on the story side of things, when we had the opportunity to publish “A Study of Sage” in February 2021 (my first sale! – kel). Not long after, they joined the editorial team, resolving submissions for submission windows, helping to determine final acceptances, and editing stories for publication.
Kel also contributed to discussions about updating submission guidelines and publication policies, as well as reaching out to authors to establish working relationships. And they’ve been a big part of planning something I can’t talk about yet. We’re excited to see it come to fruition and we can’t wait to give them a shout-out when the time comes.
It has been a pleasure working with Kel, and I hope to have the opportunity to work with them again in the future. (the feeling is mutual! – kel)
Lem had existed for all of ten nanoseconds (give or take) when she realized she was a Boltzmann brain pulsing away in the otherwise nothingness of space. She consisted of a conglomeration of particles that had randomly bounced off one another until they spontaneously formed into a structurally-sound and fully functional human brain. Lem came complete with a full inventory of false memories detailing a richly lived life back on a place called Earth. Entities like herself were absurd. That was to say highly improbable, statistically speaking, but no more so than the evolution of intelligent, organic life in the grand scheme of things. Given the unfathomable expanse of all of time and all of space, it was conceivable for a nice Boltzmann brain like Lem to randomly form then quickly dissipate innumerable times at various spots across the cosmos, the general tendency towards thermal equilibrium notwithstanding.
How did she know all that? Lem was unsure how a being only a few nanoseconds old could possess such a sophisticated comprehension of the universe, its laws, and her place in it. Maybe she didn’t. The apparent knowledge was likely one of those annoying false memories she’d recently heard about. That made sense. This bearded, bow-tied Boltzmann fellow was another illusion, much like her strange convictions that she had existed for more than ten nanoseconds, had a girlfriend named Hortense whom she loved very much, and a job in HR which she did not. But she felt utterly certain about all those things. She was as sure of their reality as the fact that she existed.
Lem understood how improbable she was, intuitively at least. The physics came easy, in a flash. The phenomenology not so much. It was one thing for those atoms to randomly form into the structure resembling a human brain, but why did it house the particular memories Lem called her own? She simply shouldn’t be. And yet, there she floated in the void, thinking-therefore-I-am-ing away as the nanoseconds slipped by.
Wait. What was she doing? She had no time to waste. Lem faced a dire situation, existential one even. Her continued survival demanded immediate action.
How exactly was a bodiless brain deprived of oxygen or any other nutrients expected to live in the vacuum? She needed shelter of one kind or another. Lem performed some quick calculations, which astounded her as she clearly remembered telling herself she was no good at math.
She wasn’t expected to survive. She wasn’t meant to be. Lem had, at best, a few zeptoseconds left.
She so badly wanted to say good-bye to Hortense. Give her a squeeze one last time, whoever, wherever, whenever she was.
The Boltzmann brain could not, of course. She possessed no arms with which to hug her Hortense. It didn’t matter. They’d find a way.
Too late.
The atoms forming Lem’s brain rescattered. She ceased to be.
***
Lem had existed for all of nine nanoseconds when she realized she was a Boltzmann brain floating in space. How strange. It all felt oddly familiar. Too familiar, for an inexperienced entity so unimaginably young. Had this happened before? Yes, yes, random particles smashing into a brief existence the structure she called home. Lem remembered now. The déjà vu left her a bit nauseous.
Or maybe she felt sick because she was a solitary brain utterly alone in an extremely empty patch of space. That explanation made even more sense. The prospect was quite terrifying actually. She really wished she hadn’t thought of it. She could now appreciate the value of the shielding provided by those annoying false memories. She tried conjuring a few. That Hortense was cute in a polka dot summer dress. Lem pictured them taking the ferry to someplace called Centre Island. She desperately craved a scoop of pistachio gelato.
What was gelato? It sounded improbably good.
The memories slipped through her non-fingers.
Shit. Lem tumbled into the nothingness. It enveloped her. The brain’s synapses slowed as they struggled to fire in a cold approaching absolute zero.
She wasn’t even the woman she called Lem, the brain realized. Just an unfortunate, accidental slab of meat caught in an astronomically unlikely event.
Calm down, Lem thought. You’ve done this before.
Now, it did seem incredibly unlikely that another set of particles at some other juncture of the universe would smash together in just the right way to form the structure of another functioning human brain with the exact same false memories as the first one along with some vague inklings of the previous iteration’s passing embodiment.
But it wasn’t impossible, statistically speaking, given enough space-time. There seemed like plenty of that around here, if not much else. A plenitude of emptiness surrounded her.
How had that last time ended, exactly? Lem couldn’t recall. Not well, she imagined, given her current situation, what with all the tumbling into the freezing nothingness. Thankfully, the universe had given her a second chance so –
Lem ceased to exist once more.
***
Lem had been Lem again for less than eight nanoseconds.
Here we go again, she thought.
She needed to act quickly. Her time was already running out.
She tried not to contemplate the immeasurable cosmic span that must have passed since her last congregation. Was this even the same universe? Maybe a Big Crunch and another Big Bang had happened in her absence. Hortense probably lay multiple, past universes away from her, unreachable.
No, Lem thought, that line of thinking wasn’t helpful. You can handle this.
Fortunately, she seemed to be getting smarter with each iteration. Smarter, or at least more aware of the problem “at hand” (which essentially meant the same thing given the context). This added knowledge might buy her a bit more time. Maybe she was evolving into a superintelligence.
Nope.
The brain known as Lem ceased.
***
Agnieszka Lem was born in Toronto, Canada on June 6, 1986, to a pair of recent immigrants from Poland. They adored their daughter, like none other. Agnes attended McMurrich Junior Public School followed by Oakwood Collegiate before obtaining her associates degree from George Brown. There she met Hortense Beaujot, who did look rather fetching in a polka dot summer dress. After graduating, Agnes found a job working in the human resources department of a company headquartered in a Davisville office building. She didn’t love it, not like she loved Hortense, but it paid the bills and allowed them to live their lives. They planned on getting married. The world seemed so bright and full of promise. Agnes especially loved those long, languid August evenings which seemed to stretch into forever. Her favorite flavor of gelato was pistachio, obviously. It was the best.
Agnieszka Lem was killed unexpectedly, at age 26, while running late to work. She was struck by a plate glass window falling from the thirty-second floor of a condo tower being built above. Death was immediate. Compensation from the construction company’s insurance was not.
***
Enough already. This needed to stop. Nothingness was everywhere, everywhen. Existence was rare. It slipped by so painfully fast, especially that last time. It hurt.
Lem needed a solution. A few options presented themselves. She would have to either prevent herself from existing again, find a way to exist for more than the blink of an eye (ten thousand years sounded like a nice, round number), or accept her non-fate.
Unfortunately, she found herself as once again an isolated brain occupying a rather unpopulated and quite chilly part of the cosmos. That left her with few options. The fleshy human brain had proven itself an unreliable bit of machinery. Little better in the grand scheme of things than a scoop of pistachio gelato helplessly melting into the August heat. She needed to project her connectome onto a more stable platform.
How exactly she might accomplish this marvelous feat of cosmic bioengineering eluded her, at least in her present, limited state.
Lem would have to wait it out, hope for the best, and try again. She knew the drill by now. Life ended quickly for a brain without much body stranded in the vacuum.
An unavoidable truth occurred to Lem as she waited. She bore no direct relationship to those past selves whose deaths now preoccupied her. Each of them had been a unique being, made of their own separate molecules, dispersed galaxies and eons apart. They had passed from existence and would never again return, as soon so would she. Their lives had never, and could never, touch. Over the immense span of cosmic time countless human brains, countless other Lems even, would have formed at random. The particular circuitry of a select few carried this delusion of having previously existed. Millions of past Lems, so like her in every other respect, had not. Neither this neural architecture nor this belief made her special in significant way. She was neither being rewarded with some bizarre form of immortality nor getting punished for any sin she’d committed. She was simply a Boltzman brain endowed with a rich trove of false memories, destined to last for a few solitary seconds, no more.
Jeez, it was all kind of depressing when she thought about it. Nothing quite captured the futility of existence than a human brain sparking into existence in the vacuum of space for a few fleeting seconds before perishing. Well, that and getting stuck working for HR.
Poof. No more Lem.
***
At five nanoseconds of age, Lem knew a few things for certain. She was a Boltzmann brain floating in space. She was highly improbable, statistically speaking, but not an impossibility. Her situation had not improved, not whatsoever. Different emptiness, same problem.
Fuck me and fuck this universe. Next.
***
Seriously, what are the odds? No, just no.
***
Cold, empty, alone. Exposed synapses pulsing into the void, the brain considered the freedom promised by her current situation. Yes, freedom. Dire as everything seemed (the countdown had already started ticking away in her mind), the isolation provided by the nothingness meant she could become whatever she wished. The past did not define her. How could it? Her past consisted of an accidental set of false memories. As did the thing the brain had grown accustomed to calling Lem. In reality, the self crawling about her neural architecture remained soft, unformed clay. The brain knew all of this for three whole nanoseconds. And yet, as the vacuum reclaimed her, she wished for nothing more than to remain the Lem she had always been.
***
Another Lem formed. No, Lem formed again. Only, this time felt different. She still lacked what she understood as her own body, but Lem no longer felt like she was Boltzmann brain floating in space. Everything felt quite solid, crowded even. Warm, but not like that immeasurable instant of pain when she’d formed in what must have been the core of a newborn star. She found her current surroundings pleasantly not alarming. It was probably one of those pesky false memories. They must have callusedlike a shell around her, protecting her from the inevitable truth. Lem was thankful for the kindly illusion’s persistence.
She waited for the overwhelming nothingness to seep in. And waited.
But she neither fell nor slowed. The inevitable cold refused to take over.
This time was different, apparently.
Lem explored.
It seemed she had formed in/as a supercomputer. No, she’d formed as the goddess worshipped by a mildly psychic squid-like race. Same difference as far as she was concerned. Lem felt steady for the first time in many lives.
Many generations ago, the squid-scientists had begun constructing the first primitive version of her, modeled on their own axons. Now, she pulsed planetwide, crunching numbers and providing solutions. She spanned continents, sending electric pulses across the surface of their massive, watery world. The squids had designed her to answer their most unanswerable questions about the meaning of existence. She had, long ago. A certain wisdom came from having lived many lives, no matter how curtailed.
The squid-scientists still tended her. Their love and dedication allowed her to grow. She was quietly becoming the largest computer yet known. A small gift for all she had given them. Time was hers now. They wanted her to explore for herself.
But where to go? The squid folk expressed little interest in defying the gravity of their immense world. The upper atmosphere spelt death for them. Death. An unwanted feeling overtook Lem. She pictured a solitary brain spontaneously coming into being in the void of space and passing almost instantly as the first floods of consciousness took hold.
Shit. She had been so preoccupied with her own meagre survival that she’d failed to think through the full implications of her situation. Whatever she remembered experiencing in the vacuum had occurred billions of other times to billions of others, each Boltzmann brain endowed with a unique set of undeniably-real-feeling false memories. That included –
“I must find Hortense before it’s too late.”
A hush fell across the squid-scientists working the machine, those privileged few who lucked into hearing those words finally spoken. The name was a sacred one to even the most agnostic of them.
“Yes, find her by any means you can,” they responded, as each blessed themself with a tentacly gesture.
“But I don’t know how.” Panic pervaded Lem’s system, causing it to overheat. “Where am I even? She could form galaxies, no universes, from here. She could have lived for the last time billions of years ago or won’t be born for an eon yet. You’ve barely breached the surface of your closest moon. Where do we start? I’ll never see her again. It’s impossible.”
“No, it’s simply highly improbable,” replied the head squid-scientist. She couldn’t fathom the odds of chancing into this essential role in a conversation long foretold by her people. The one with the poor, near-infinite goddess who still failed to understand. “This is a minor problem, given enough time.”
Yes. As improbable as it sounded, some Lem or another would eventually encounter Hortense. The perspective granted by many lives lived (however briefly) told her so. The two of them must meet again, inevitably, given the expanse of time. In that regard, her current form did hold certain advantages.
If Lem had possessed the body she once imagined for herself in each of those other iterations, she would have let out a sigh. Sometimes things were just easier when you formed as a brain floating in the nothingness of space. Such a fleeting existence, free of all responsibility, was not without its comforts.
Author’s Note: Boltzmann brains are theoretically possible (if highly undesirable) objects in cosmological theory. I found myself intrigued by them and wanted to write a story that featured one as a protagonist. This proved challenging as they would be extremely rare entities (to put it mildly), only existing for a fraction of a moment in the nothingness of space. So I decided to add a few more and string them together. As the title suggests, my story is very much about what exactly counts as the self, where it starts and how does it end. What would be the psychology of your median Boltzmann brain? Would it prove or refute the neuro-reductionism that we are at our core our brains and nothing more? What kind of stories would such a mind tell themselves during their micro-blink of existence? I leave it to the reader to decide if Lem is one (repeatedly unlucky in her circumstances) or many (each afflicted with a similar false belief).
M. J. Pettit is an undisciplined academic, a longtime reader of short fiction, and an occasional writer of stories. His fiction has previously appeared in Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, and Small Wonders, among other venues. He divides his time between Toronto, Canada and Manchester, UK as well as other places. More information about his fiction is available on his website.
Content note (click for details)Content note: death of a child
Do not distribute, the feds don’t take kindly to these handouts.
INTRODUCTION
Hey, kid. Ol’ Buddy here, your favourite underground, pamphlet-writing canuck. I hope, whoever and wherever you are, you’re well. Keep the generator full, the firewood chopped, and the contraband hidden.
Yeah, I said the next guide was going to be about rainwater collecting, but this topic is pretty fucking overdue for a pamphlet. File a complaint, if that bothers you. (Too bad this is real paper, asshole! No comment section!)
Those idiots in the US-of-fucking-A would have you believe drones are state-of-the-art, heavy-duty, kevlar-coated BULLSHIT. They’re called drones for a reason, see? Because the military drones on about them. Like if the marketing has six different hyphenated words for ‘expensive’, they’ll become invincible.
I know you’ve lost someone to these drones. I sure have. It doesn’t matter how many people you lose, grief always finds a new way to sneak up and sucker-punch ya, trap you under 500 tons of black seawater and make you think there’s no way to fight back.
But drones aren’t invincible. And I’m going to show you how easy they come down.
Now come on. Get up before dawn and make some coffee, if you can spare the water ration. Start your car while it’s still cold enough to see your breath, grab your 20-gauge pump, and stuff your pockets full of shotgun shells. Then get your ass in gear. You and your dear ol’ Buddy are going hunting.
GEAR
Obviously, the feds aren’t going to sell you camo gear and guns since Canada lost the war and big brother America moved in. But get your hands on other stuff: hippies, or waders. Big warm coats. Ear protection. (Why ear protection, you ask? Anyone who’s ever fired a shotgun is laughing at you, kid. But it’s alright. You’ll learn.)
See what you can find at MEC or SAIL, or call up that one guy you know who can get anything if you pay well and don’t ask questions. But you stay warm, and you stay dry, okay? Buddy’s rules.
When my son Colton and I go hunting, I make sure he’s so bundled up he looks like a linebacker. Same applies to you, kid.
These drones are tiny, they’re moving, and the best way to shoot them down is to hit their propellers, so rifles are out. A single round from a rifle is a near-guaranteed miss, and a high-velocity bullet can travel pretty damn far before coming down, which means you have no idea what it might hit. Grab yourself a shotgun instead—it’ll give you a wide spread, and because the drones need to fly low under the treetops, they’ll be nicely in range.
You ever hunt duck? I figure it’s the same principle, only ducks don’t come kevlar-coated.
DRONE TYPES
I separate drones into three categories: Surveillance, Sporting, and OH SHIT.
Surveillance: These are your run-of-the-mill drones, your bread and butter. Recognizable features include ugly grey/green paint, lots of lights, and cameras mounted to their bellies that gleam like the eyes of our all-American god.
Sporting: Used by men rich enough to afford hunting permits, they’re big and quiet, with custom paint jobs, wi-fi signals, and pricy cameras.
Kid, I know how this sounds. That’s expensive gear, you’re thinking. If I shot one down, it’d see my family through winter. They’d be so proud.
Fuck, I know the temptation. But you gotta listen to ol’ Buddy when he says LEAVE THEM ALONE. The second one of those drones goes down, a phone goes up, a call goes to Washington, and the government comes hunting you. Understand?
That’s how you die.
OH SHIT: That’s what you’ll say when you see ’em. Military hunting drones. The ones designed to hunt YOU. (That’s why you’re reading this, right? You’ve seen what happens when those drones come out to play. Or you’ve heard stories. Or, right now, you’re as deep in the woods as you know how, waiting for them to pump you full of more lead than you thought could fit inside a person. It’s okay. Deep breath, kid. We’re gonna get you out of this.)
HUNTING
The first rule: GO TO THE DRONES. I cannot state that loud enough. Here, I’ll do it again. GO. TO. THE. DRONES.
Yes, that scares you, but let’s play out two scenarios.
In the first, you kill a drone in the woods. Within hours that whole area is overrun with sniffer dogs and fucks with automatic rifles, if you’re lucky. It’ll be OH SHITs if you’re not. Scenario two, you’ve listened to ol’ Buddy. You go to the drones’ charging pads and pick them off on their own turf. Then they’ve got no way of knowing where you came from or where you’re going.
Then, you’ll live.
This shouldn’t bear mentioning, but the first time you fire a shotgun better not be now. Practice beforehand or you’ll die of embarrassment before the feds have time to make you die of something else. First time Colton fired a shotgun, it knocked him on his ass so hard I thought the poor boy was going to be concussed.
So here you are, at the asscrack of dawn with ol’ Buddy, parked in a copse of tamarack trees, near a lake that America is slurping dry as the spoils of war. You’ve had your coffee, warmed your hands on the radiator, and we’re ready to roll.
Set up well out of range of the cameras, sensors, and barbed wire around the charging pad. You’ve already done your due diligence checking the site and making sure they can’t see you before you start hunting, because you’re not a dumbass. (Need help? See if you can find a copy of BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO CASING THE JOINT)
Now what?
First, timing. The drones that fly by night roost at these charging pads before heading back to base. We’ll set up before sunrise, and catch them coming in low as a flock. Drones only transmit live feed to base if the algorithm senses an anomaly. But they record everything and upload it for review when they’re locked in and charging.
This means there’s a pretty twenty-two second window when they’re not transmitting. When they’ve pinged home base as Returned, but haven’t actually crossed that barbed wire fence. That’s when we hit. And you better hit hard, kid. Think about whoever you’ve lost to these goddamned drones. Get so mad your teeth ache with it. Then pay America back in bullets, the only language they understand.
POST-HUNT
So you’ve shot down your first drone and you’re feeling like a million bucks. And you should! Good shooting! Ol’ Buddy is so damn proud of you, kid.
But you ain’t clear yet. If you wanna take home drone souvenirs, DON’T LEAVE THE SITE!
All drones got a GPS tracker under their front left wing, and you’re gonna need to take that out. If you want to give those fucks in Washington something to chew on, grab a slingshot and fire it over the fence. Buys you more than just time to get gone—a broken drone means no military, just a technician sent out to fix it.
Kid, if you don’t mind, I’m going to imagine you’re like my son. Colton’s a lanky boy. Scruffy hair. Teenage acne. A little boneheaded (he got that from his daddy) and always stealing my coats. But a good heart. He wouldn’t stick around to hassle those technicians, and neither will you. They’re poor suckers trying to afford water for their families, same as the rest of us.
Besides, taking potshots at technicians is a surefire way to get military eyes on your locale. And I already told you that’s how you die.
Once the GPS tracker is dealt with, take that drone back to your commune, your trailer, your little hovel. Then start stripping it for parts. For tips and tricks, ask around and get your hands on BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO REPURPOSING AMERICAN MILITARY HARDWARE.
But I’ll tell you this: everything in that drone can be reused. Hell, if you’ve got some hacking know-how, you can turn it into a productive member of society. (The hardware connection ain’t hard—drones all use USB-C. Lazy fucking Americans.)
WHEN IT GOES WRONG
Sometimes, you fuck up. It’s not your fault, kid. We’ve all done stupid shit to make the ones we love proud. But there’s a chance you won’t have the luxury of hunting drones on your terms.
Sometimes, the drones are hunting you.
And maybe you’re in the woods, alone. You’re scared. Can’t go home, not with a drone on your tail. Can’t plan, or run. You’ve got a jammed shotgun, a big coat, and more bravery than a kid your age should have, but that ain’t gonna matter. Your daddy is going to find you far, far too late.
Deep breath. You’re gonna get out of this, okay? Listen to ol’ Buddy. Those algorithms are trained to sense things out of the ordinary: strange colours, movement, human shapes. So you gotta blend in.
If you’ve got camo on, go low. Hide your face and bury yourself under cold leaves, rocks, and long grasses. It’ll take hours for those drones to give up. Don’t move, even if your arm is asleep and your leg is cramping and you have to piss so bad you think you’re going to explode. Even if you think you’ve been there long enough. Even if you think it’s impossible for them to still be looking.
If you’ve got no camo gear because today you took your daddy’s warm red coat with you, the one you haven’t quite grown into yet, turn it inside out. Roll in the mud, even if it makes your teeth chatter and your fingers numb. Rub dirt and moss through your hair. See if you can find a cave to hide in. Don’t move.
Please kid, don’t move. Wait for someone to come find you.
After hours and hours, after you’ve swung from scared to bored to self-loathing and back again so many times your brain feels numb, if you really, really, truly think you’re safe…
Move slow. Twitch a finger. Curl your hand. Shift your arm. Your head and torso move last, understand? A bullet to your arm, even a dozen, hurt bad. But they won’t hurt near as bad as one to the head.
You’re going to get home, kid, because you followed Buddy’s advice.
Your daddy won’t have to find you, hours later, cold and still in that bright red coat. Your daddy won’t have to realize it ain’t the bright red of the coat he’s seeing, but the blood soaked through the fabric.
Your daddy won’t be too late.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it. Another Buddy Raymond guide, straight from my printer to your hands.
I don’t normally like my pamphlets distributed, but for this one I’m making an exception. Give this to everyone you know. Everyone with a chip on their shoulder. Everyone who lost someone because I didn’t write this goddamned guide sooner.
Now, grab your gear, grab your gun, and get going. Go kill every fucking drone from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, and tell ’em Colton’s dad sent you.
Author’s Note: I’ve always thought there’s something really interesting about combining very old ways of doing with hyper-new ways of being. Duck are ancient animals. Drones are a new technology. And yet, it seemed plausible that in some dystopia five minutes into the future, some backwater hunter would just reuse duck-hunting methods to fight new threats. Originally, this guide was part of a larger piece, but I found as I wrote it that I was far more interested in the opinionated hunter writing the guide than anything else, so I got out of his way and let him do the talking.
Gillian Secord is a speculative fiction writer and Aurora Award finalist from Toronto, Canada, whose work has appeared in Fireside Magazine, Cossmass Infinities, and others. When she’s not writing, she’s scouring the city for good coffee shops and collecting vinyl. She has two cats and has yet to convince either of the fuzzballs to pay rent. You can find her online at gilliansecord.wordpress.com and on twitter @GillianSecord.
They hold each other in the shallow cool of an August night, two among many in a backyard arced in string-lights, wrapped up in the music and the celebratory ethereality of a wedding. They dance together like it’s theirs, in a moment that is just itself and what they are within it.
* * *
When they woke it was in what little pocket warmth they’d accumulated between their bodies in the night, clinging together in a sleeping bag as if without the other they would forget how to breathe, or why. When Nash cracked his eyes open to take in this reality it was to Vicky watching him, her face as beautiful as everything behind it, a moment of naked love in which they both wished that they could remain lying here like this, frozen in stasis. Neither needed to say it.
But time moved on. Inexorable, mechanical as a wave in the ocean, as the dissolve of light into dark. They knew it was time to go when Vicky mumbled that he needed to brush his teeth, and Nash said that she’d had too much to drink last night.
“Well, how else am I going to sleep through this?” she snapped, pulling away from him.
“You’re the one who wants to cram us into this one bag,” Nash said. “Not my fault that you can smell my breath—”
“Stop.”
They took a moment to recollect, looking first at the tent walls, then the travel bags at their feet.
“I guess it’s time to go,” Vicky said.
They emerged into a winter in stasis, here in this relic world. The ground cold and hard-packed, overhung by bare trees. Gray sky.
“I’ll get the tent down,” Nash said.
“I’ll pack up,” Vicky said. This was how they handled the moments when the future came too close, advancing behind the fiery orange and red tendrils of the wave that separated it from this world of the past. It brought preliminary effects: budding trees, shoots of green grass, mild warmth that whispered with the summer.
For living things, its effects were the beginning of the state that they would be in, once the time-wave passed over them and brought them days? years? into the future. Like foreshocks to a temporal earthquake, and what waited on the other side?
For Vicky and Nash, it meant that they started fighting. Building up walls and nurturing resentments. Making plans to leave. Once they outran those foreshocks, got beyond the effects, regret filled them and they made up.
Which meant that whatever era of their lives existed beyond the wave, in the future, didn’t involve them together.
And so they ran, the last of the living on this side of time, defying the mechanical, unceasing advance of loss—struggling to stay together, and in love.
* * *
Neither could remember how long they’d been here. Living in this world of the past meant that one’s perception simplified to a moment-by-moment basis, shedding the artificial measurements of hours and days. But here, in this unceasing end? Anything beyond the moment was hard to understand. A freedom in that, at first.
But now, when they woke from scant hours of sleep, suffering those preliminary effects, bitterness and resentment led each to privately wonder a terrible option… so they just went through the motions. Pack up. Get in the car. Eat breakfast on the road. Start talking when the shame from holding those resentments built, then gave way.
Yet there was only so much land left. The geography had gone flat, and though they didn’t know what the road signs for exits and dead towns meant, they knew that these were coastal plains; soon they would smell the ocean.
“We’ll find a boat,” Nash said.
Vicky took his hand. “I don’t know how to steer one. Do you?”
“No.”
She ran her thumb over the back of his hand. “We’ll figure it out, then.”
But they both knew that they couldn’t get a boat running, not before the wave reached them. Before the future did.
* * *
Vicky missed her family. Nash his friends, because they were more like family to him. She couldn’t help wishing that she was back home, speeding down the highway as the sun set over cornfields and a thunderstorm rolled in across the miles. He wanted to stand out on the porch after the rain left and birdsong returned, and the fresh sunlight glittered over puddles in the driveway.
They’d had to leave their dog behind. Neither one could remember him fully, but when they started talking about him it all came back. Who was with him now? If the wave passed over them, would he still be there, back home, waiting for whichever one took him?
Time had nearly overrun them once before, when they’d crossed the mountains with those crooked switchbacks inching them along. But the wave passed over everything in a line, unstoppable—it had come so close that the sky lit aflame with orange and red aurora streaks whipping the sky and land, while phantom leaves eased into being and cars like ghosts materialized. Their screaming match had left them in tears. Vicky had been driving, and finally shouted, “If I’m that bad, then why don’t I just hit the fucking brakes?” And Nash spat, “Because you’re scared.”
That night, lying in the sleeping bag, far enough away from the wave to apologize again and again and believe it, Nash whispered, “I’m scared, too.”
“Is that why we’re still doing this?”
He brushed her bangs from her eyes. “Because we love each other, too.”
“But are we running for love? Or to get away from what’s on the other side?” She paused, then answered her own question. “Both, I guess.”
“Is that…” Nash swallowed. “Is that any reason to stay here? In the past?”
Vicky blinked back more tears—why did she cry so much, being with him? “I don’t know. Isn’t that… most relationships? Sometimes it’s love, sometimes it’s because that’s what we know and we stay because it’s less scary than leaving?”
“I don’t want that to be why.”
“Me, neither.” She kissed him, held him. And they both kept silent the same fear they harbored: What happened when they reached the ocean?
* * *
When they passed the first road sign that announced the distance to the beach, Nash asked, “What’s your favorite memory of us?”
Vicky gave a strained, but real smile. She said, “When we ran off to Seattle.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Just… running off with this wonderful guy. But the moment itself, it was when we were sitting on the patio at that restaurant that looked out over the water. Remember that place?”
“The one with the trout?”
Vicky laughed. “You ordered it but didn’t know they serve the entire fish. The look on your face when they brought it out was just so… real. And cute.”
“Never ordering trout again.”
“But we were just sitting there, couldn’t have been more than half an hour. The sun was out, and all the people were walking by and I looked over at you and you were doing the same thing I was. Just taking in the world. And that was it. That was all I needed, was being in a new city, with you. You were the only thing that was solid for me, in the middle of all this strange newness. Like an anchor.”
Nash squeezed her hand.
“What about you?” she asked.
“It’s dumb.”
“No it’s not. What is it?”
He smiled, keeping his eyes on the road. “Remember when we went to the Fair last year?”
Vicky rolled her eyes. “Not really. Not after the fourth margarita… that night is your favorite? I was blackout drunk.”
“Okay, not that part of it. But it was… I don’t know, when I got you to the car, pretty much carrying you and you were singing ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’”
Vicky groaned and he laughed, but not in a mean way.
“And I got you into the car and drove us back, and you were mumbling about the pigs in the petting zoo, how you wanted one as a pet—”
“I still do.”
“But then you fell asleep, pressed up against the window.” He paused, swallowed through the hitch in his throat. “You needed me right then and I was there. Helping you, I guess… being your man. Just carrying you home.”
She watched him watching the road. Then leaned over the console and into him as best she could, face buried into his neck while he held an arm around her with the other on the steering wheel, wanting more than anything to pull over and hold her back. Eventually, she started to wish he’d changed into a different shirt, but he was always doing that, just picking up whatever piece of clothing was in sight, even off the floor. And he wanted her to take over more of the driving, he was tired and sore and he always had to take the lead.
They separated, back to their sides of the car.
* * *
But there was another memory. Profound for both of them, and maybe if they had mentioned it to each other it would have displaced the patio in a new city, and the late-night drive carrying her home, because for it to be held so deeply by both of them would have made it more than their independent moments. But they hadn’t told each other, hadn’t had the time.
Two of their friends were married in a backyard on an evening in August—the two who had connected Vicky and Nash in the first place—so they were both in the wedding party, had even walked down the aisle together in a bridesmaid dress and groomsman tux like precedents to a different dress and tux. After the service it was dinner and cake and drinks under tents in the backyard, speeches, and as the sun sank the DJ started the music.
Neither of them remembered the night with much coherency, thanks to the open bar. But the clearest moment wasn’t the ceremony, the speeches, any of that.
It was when they’d been dancing, alongside all these friends and strangers, under string-lights with the grass cushioning their sore feet, the music meaning little more than what moved their bodies together and held their eyes in lockstep. A moment—just a light on a string of them, but it glowed brighter than the others. It ended and yet it never ended, swelling into a presence real and powerful and continuing on as separate memories to exist in shared pocket-time, the closest thing to eternity that there really is.
* * *
They sat in the car, staring out at the lifeless gray ocean. No wind, no surf, nothing out there toward where it banded into the featureless sky, because this relic world of the past had lost even its natural phenomenon.
Already Vicky wanted to be anywhere he wasn’t. And Nash just wanted to be alone.
When they walked out onto the beach, stumbling a bit in the loose sand, they kept a wary distance from each other. A marina stood far up the shoreline, but neither had brought up the possibility of taking one of the boats. They resented the other for the four years wasted. Part of them couldn’t believe that they’d been considering marriage—although that was held with the knife-stab agony of having been so close to it.
A beach without surf, without waves dragging fingers up and down the skin of the earth. Elements trapped together and refusing each other. They had stayed here for too long. You couldn’t outrun time no matter how hard you tried, or how much it hurt.
The sky began to lighten. Tufts of beachgrass sprouted, hair on a newborn’s head. Phantom gulls flickered along the sand, their squawking the voice of the sky. The air itself vibrated, and as Nash and Vicky faced each other tendrils of orange and red reached around and between them—thin at first, then thickening, the ligaments of time itself.
He saw her in the autumn night, leaning against the window as he drove her home. She saw the man sitting across the table in a new city. They danced in the August night.
In a moment of fear, they wrapped their arms around not the targets of loathing they were trapped with, but around the only human comfort in this place. A bitter part of them wondered if that was all they had ever been: gripping to the first readily available comfort in this void.
The wave rushed over them, the inexorable mechanical washing forward of time. Among the oranges and reds emerged a core of purple, a deep sunset kiss settling over and around and in them—removing them from the beach and each other’s arms into futures separate and holding for the other memories and regrets and the hope that the other was doing better than when they’d ended things and that they didn’t hate each other really but were too ashamed to cross the breach into some kind of I-miss-you friendship while remembering not the agony of how they’d ended or even the excitement of how they began and not even the anchor in a new city or driving her home but a night in August. And even after they’d long since lost most of those images, the emotion of that night still held the summation of what they’d been at their best, not erasing their worst but holding against it, a moment and memory resting as a light on a string of them in the dark.
* * *
They hold each other in the shallow cool of an August night, two among many in a backyard arced in string-lights, wrapped up in the music and the celebratory ethereality of a wedding. They dance together like it’s theirs, in a moment that is just itself and what they are within it.
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by Ben Howard’s dark, haunting, beautiful song, “Time is Dancing.” Listening to it, I see lovers at their last dance, knowing that what they have between them is ending, but finding themselves, for the duration of a song, in love again—during which the aftermath doesn’t matter, but instead only what they are, together, in that moment. From there I set them running from that end, defying inevitability by stretching that last moment out beyond its natural limit—until finally giving it up.
John Stadelman (he/him) is a writer from North Carolina now based in Chicago. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College, and his recent fiction has appeared in Freedom Fiction, Schlock!, Dark Horses Magazine and elsewhere, and he is currently at work on a novel. Although he doesn’t believe in ghosts, he’s pretty sure he saw a Chupacabra one night on the North Side. Stalk him on Twitter at @edgy_ashtray.
If you’ve played either of the two recent Nintendo Switch-based Legend of Zelda games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom) long enough, you know Hestu, the most distinct of the Koroks. After playing these games and other games in the Legend of Zelda series for many, many hours, I have “discovered” (developed a headcanon) that explains the secret origins of Hestu and why Hestu is different from all the other Koroks.
Who Is Hestu?
If you’re not familiar: The Koroks are forest spirits whose home is in the Korok Forest which is protected from the outside world by The Lost Woods which earns its name by being filled with a confounding fog that will take you back at the entrance if you wander from a pre-set path. Although that’s their home, they can be found all over Hyrule, approximately a thousand of them to find in little hiding spaces (plus some more that aren’t hiding). Koroks as a whole look like little roughly crafted humanoid child-like figures with a big leaf for their face. Each Korok looks a little different, from the color and shape of the leaf to the exact proportions of their body but generally they look like this. They can be found hiding under rocks, or will appear from nowhere if you win little shooting games or spatial puzzles or other little challenges. They are generally childish and fun-loving and love to play hide-and-seek. Tears of the Kingdom added a recurring new kind of Korok: the traveling Korok who is going to visit a friend but has packed such a large backpack that it has grown too tired too move. Finding or helping this multitude of Koroks will give you the reward of Korok seeds. Which is a little weird if you think about it–are those like Korok babies? Apparently the game-makers intended them to be Korok poops.
The use for poop-scooping for the Korok kids is unclear until you meet Hestu. After helping with a side quest in Breath of the Wild to recover Hestu’s magical maracas, he asks if you can help him find all the Korok seeds that the mischievous little Koroks have stolen from him, and whenever you do Hestu will perform a magical dance that will expand your weapon, bow, or shield inventory slots.
Okay, so what is Hestu’s backstory? After playing Breath of the Wild, and after playing Tears of the Kingdom for dozens of hours, I had not really given it any thought at all. Why does he need a backstory? He’s the forest spirit dude who expands your inventory and while he is likeable and funny and useful, does he really need a backstory? Until the connection spontaneously popped into my head.
Hestu’s Origin
I randomly realized where Hestu came from: Tingle finally fulfilled his greatest wish to become a fairy. Hestu is Tingle transformed!
I will go into more detail below, but even superficially they have quite a few similarities. They are both adults with facial hair (OK Hestu’s beard is a leaf, but it appears to be in the place of facial hair), taking on the appearance in some way of an adult version of the Great Deku Tree’s children. They both have a love of words they made up (“Kooloo-Limpah” vs “Shak-Shakala”, though the latter is probably onomatopoeia for the sound of maracas, it is not a common onomatopoeia as far as I am aware). They both have a preference for glitter.
Wait, Who?
OK, so if you’ve only played the Zelda games on Nintendo Switch you might not know who Tingle is.
Tingle first appeared in Majora’s Mask which was released in the year 2000. Tingle claimed to be the reincarnation of a fairy, something which has been a central part of his character in all of his appearances. He is 35 years old and his father who works at the swamp tourist center is exasperated by his son’s insistence that he is a fairy. Tingle wears a green jumpsuit with a pointy hood, presumably meant to resemble Link’s classical outfit of a green tunic with a pointy hat. He can often be found in that game floating above a scene attached to a big red balloon. If you pop the balloon he will fall to the ground and will sell you maps of different areas.
He’s appeared in several other games, most notably in The Wind Waker where he has a more prominent role, but keeps the same backstory, claiming to be a fairy.
Supporting Evidence
Bear with me, there are quite a few pieces of information I took into account for this theory.
Tingle does not directly appear in the Switch games, but he is referenced. There is a “Tingel Island” on the east coast of Hyrule. In the Breath of the Wild expansion pack, and in the regular Tears of the Kingdom game, there is a Tingle clothing set. The clothing set could be an alt universe thing, like a branched timeline–it seems like at least some of the Link-themed clothing sets come from alternate universes, so Tingle’s might be the same. But Tingel Island seems like more of a solid clue that it’s not only an alt universe reference. So I think that could be interpreted as meaning that Tingle has existed by that name in the universe.
When Tingle says he is a fairy, what does that mean? Generally when the Zelda series refers to a “fairy” it is most often referring to a tiny flying glowing creature with transparent butterfly wings. These tend to be able to heal damage to Link instantaneously, or when collected and stored in Link’s inventory may be able to revive Link from what would otherwise be fatal damage. There are also fairies with the same appearance (such as Navi, and Tatl) that help Link by helping him target or by giving him advice.
There are also the Great Fairies which tend to take the appearance of giant women who reside in pools of water and grant Link boons (enhanced clothing or better weapons or shields) in exchange for something (money or monster parts or other things).
But I don’t think Tingle is referring to either of these kinds of fairy. His wardrobe is the biggest clue. Majora’s Mask is a direct sequel to The Ocarina of Time. In The Ocarina of Time, Link has grown up in the Deku Forest. He thinks that he is a Kokiri, one of the forest children who all have fairy companions except for Link. But it turns out that Link is not a Kokiri–his lack of fairy is a clue, but the other Kokiri can also not leave the Deku Forest, and the other Kokiri do not age as Link does in Ocarina of Time. For the actual Kokiri, the fairy seems to be an intrinsic part of their existence–there is no Kokiri without a fairy. From a distance, you can’t see the childlike Kokiri, only the flying fairy companion and the Kokiri fades in as you approach. My interpretation of this is that the fairy is the more real or solid one of the pair, and the childlike form is just a projection from this particular variety of fairy. So, in my interpretation, a Kokiri not only has a fairy companion, it is a fairy and Tingle’s wardrobe is meant to show that.
The next step to understand here is that Kokiri are equivalent to Korok (I had not recalled that this detail was supported by game canon in The Wind Waker, at least according to this wiki page). They both have their primary home in a forest connected to the Lost Woods, with their guardian the Great Deku Tree. They are both childlike in both appearance and behavior (apart from Hestu who has a more adultlike proportion and size, but again Hestu appears to be anomalous). To be fair, their appearance differs, and the Koroks are not limited by the boundaries of the forest. If they are equivalent, what accounts for the differences? Apparently the great flood that caused the world to be a series of islands in The Wind Waker caused the transformation. But it’s not uncommon in the series of the games for familiar things to take very different forms from one game to another. In the original Legend of Zelda game the Zora were just another monster, popping their head out of water to shoot fireballs at Link, but through the different games we have seen that they are sentient being, so we have seen how vastly different a species or race can be from game to game. The shift between Kokiri and Korok is less far-fetched than the shift of the Zoras.
Other Theories About the Anomaly of Hestu
I have wondered since I started playing Breath of the Wild years ago, why there are approximately one-thousand childlike Koroks and then there is one adultlike Korok. What life cycle accounts for this? I wondered if the Koroks are an invasive species and the Deku Tree eats them when they get to be a certain age to avoid them crowding out all other life in Hyrule. I wondered if they are always childlike and Hestu is some kind of random genetic variation. I wondered if the Koroks have a social hierarchy like bees, where changes can be triggered by environmental factors like diet, and the Great Deku Tree is the queen, and Hestu is the queen in training meant to take over the hive when the Deku Tree dies (we know the Deku Tree can die, as it did die in Ocarina of Time).
How It Happened
My thought is: Although Tingle has declared that he is a fairy, I think some part of him realizes that he is not a fairy in any objective sense. So, knowing what he wants, he sets out to find a way to become a fairy. He can either see the Koroks, or read about them in some storybook or heard about them in some myth so he finds out where they came from and goes on a quest to find their home. He eventually finds a way through the Lost Woods and approaches the Deku Tree as a supplicant, begging the Deku Tree to make him into a Korok. The Deku Tree considers for a time, and finally agrees, with a condition. The Deku Tree will turn Tingle into a Korok, if Tingle takes responsibility for all the other Koroks. It’s hard to be a parent to something like one thousand mischievous children who won’t grow up, when you’re ancient and very tired, and also when you’re literally a tree so you can’t even chase them around. A responsible adult Korok, on the other hand, would have much more energy and mobility to caretake the Koroks. Because Tingle is an adult when he was transformed, he took the form of an adult Korok even though that was unprecedented.
Conclusion
Hestu may not canonically be Tingle. But, I don’t think it’s unbelievable that the writers could’ve made it a possibility on purpose. Let me know what you think of the headcanon, if you have your own headcanon. Why do you think Hestu appears to be the only adultlike Korok?
The surface of the iceberg has long had its taste of bitter cuisine: shimmering snow, wriggling bacterial filament, microplastic granules from the stolen boat you steered across the choppy Arctic waves. But this is new: the woody whisper of your matrilineal family map. The iceberg leeches the warmth from the paper, like sucking air through teeth, trying to latch on— but you bend, shake the map, and tuck it back into your pocket.
Scraping into the snow: your ice drill, the auger bit modified using forbidden ancestral smithery. Encased around the drill: your gloved hands. Encased within your hands: a flourishing commune of microflora.
And so you begin.
Two feet down and you’re already dislodging organisms frozen one hundred years ago, the briny Marinobacter arcticus, the somber Trichinella nativa that lurks in the intestinal cysts of walruses. One tusk of said genus had lain undisturbed in the ice for one hundred and twelve years. Your drill shatters it on its press deeper. Had you tasted the bone-laced melt, you would have savored a bitter lick of seawater that housed Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the lively microorganism who tore apart your mother through her exile. They are frozen with her still, on the glacier from which this iceberg calved. Even now, your intestinal microphages sing her elegy.
Twenty feet down, and you are the first human in twelve hundred years to descend through this ice beneath sea level. Your pituitary gland releases a gush of ancestral recognition: crackling adrenaline for your Streptococcus salivaris to drink. You hammer a pike into the wall and knot your glacier rope. Although you do not know it, the permafrost pulses around you as your salivaris celebrate. The iceberg wants to taste them. The iceberg wants to taste you.
Thirty-five feet down. When you scrape the marker across the ice, you scrape free a colony of nasty Golocii dendramens that haven’t frequented the Arctic since 500 BCE. Do you sense them? Their straining to be free? Or perhaps their more patient twin, the Golocii yuoua, whose steps stalk from cell to cell of foetal narwhals until it can climb the limbs of frostbitten fishermen?
They are not all bad, and that is a promise; after all, their voices, and the voices of their progeny, have crooned such an insightful chorus through the millennia. And millennia you enter, at forty feet down, where the ice is so consuming and crystalline it has perfectly preserved a prehistoric snow-vole and all the nematodes teeming between its whiskers. Your scientists would froth to dislodge it and send it home to their institutions, but what of the nematodes then? The nematodes know their home; they whisper of the fear and the ecstasy of the tundra, the warmth of passing from mother to daughter.
You are halfway down the iceberg, now. You know what you seek. Night has fallen, and the ice barely reflects the dim gleam of the stars far above. Your hands have long gone numb and aching; your drill is weary, but its reinforcement holds—the flutes swallowing the shredded ice upon contact, the auger humming on your deck prior as your compass of final precision. A testament to your long nights at the forge, where you sweated over the spiraling steel, disbelieving the implications of the manual, afraid of what your creation would allow you to unearth.
You cast your gaze upward, surveying the dark, narrow walls of your borehole. This far submerged, the round yellow glow of your headlamp feels like desecration.
At fifty feet, the color of the ice changes. Your flashlight illuminates fractalled black, like the pluming ink of a giant squid, hauntingly beautiful in its etchings. When you press your gloved hand to the wall, its heartbeat pulses against your palm.
You pull your hand back, adjust your earplugs. You do not hear it, but you feel the humming in your ribs: all the iceberg’s denizens are singing. Beckoning.
Your mother’s blood lashes hot in your ears.
Forimanifera saladaati wants to meet you so badly, but it is stuck in free fall from when it pirouetted from a piece of meteorite matter and onto the ice ten million years ago. Dedratida namita does not know it, but its great-times-ten-thousand-grandchild lurked on the door handle when your mother came home from school to tell your grandparents of your untimely conception. After they struck her, that grandchild blistered her bleeding lip.
And when your mother kissed your father for the last time, before he left his job, left to leave forever, that grandchild tasted the condemnation of her peers, no, her nation, no, your planet, in the slick space between his tooth and tongue.
Eibrans thyssambria’s distant progeny was rusting the safe when, two decades later, you drugged your grandparents, broke the combination lock, and stole these coordinates.
The iceberg hums, eager, to the beat of your fury.
And dimly, so dimly you believe you are hallucinating at first and must shut off your headlamp: a light, pulsing beneath your feet. Within the light, jetés in live sequence: Thusina dansii, who felled a hundred thousand hominids in the Pleistocene epoch; Goethye frustoac, who gave rise to the first continental death of forest that became modern oil. They are joyous; they are waiting.
The light licks at the edges of your vision, humming a song of the depths, beseeching you to lay down, lay down and be still forever, but you start your drill again and its ancient singing bares its teeth. The auger destroys: it absorbs the light below, refracts the light above, dashes the light against the rocks. Through this chaos you descend.
You drill deeper, until you’re surrounded by the glow of the curved ice around you, and below you it is brighter still. Here the hum of your bones is so dense you must drill or die, and then a shadow slowly unchips from the glow beneath your feet, until you are tracing a blurry human silhouette.
Here you switch to a thick-bristled brush and calcium chloride, that liquid eager to eat the ice, and fall to your subzeroed hands and knees. Each brushstroke brings greater definition, then skin: you free a withered arm; you defrost a brittle shoulder; and, by centimeters, you finally chip clarity into the face.
I stare up at you.
The long-breathless bacteria, the viruses in stasis, are all in frenzy, to the beat of my endocrinal glands, to the wet swish of your heart. Grandchild witnesses great-great-millennia-old grandmother, and the prescience of mind of her and all her bacterial children, deep in her grandest horde. You are soaked in bacterial musk; you are Noah’s vengeful ark, unearthing ancient horror to bring back to your masses.
I could not be prouder.
With shaking hands, you paint me out of the ice, and though I cannot move, you feel my eyes in the flagella of billions of bacteriocytes tracking your every movement. Clutching my frail body in your arms, you take one shuddering breath, for your mother. Then you cup a frozen hand against my cheek in supplication.
Trillions of my children scream.
I accept.
A seismic shift in allegiance. An entire world distills into your eyes: your severed ancestral cradle, and all its progeny, and every venomous inhabitant. We beat in unified time with your pulse, with your breaths, with you.
Your grand matrilineal secret: unearthed at last, and wanting.
With trembling arms you lay me into the indent from which I came, to my final, easy rest. Every cell of the iceberg sighs.
You loop your foot into your rope, with vengeance.
Soaked with the teeming eagerness of millennia, you begin to climb.
Author’s Note: I was inspired to write this story two years ago after a friend sent me this craft article by Lincoln Michel about story engines. Michel mentioned that an iceberg can be a story structure (referencing a tweet by writer Jeff Jackson). I thought, how can I construct a story like an iceberg? Here is the result.
Sara S. Messenger is a speculative fiction writer and poet residing in New England, USA. She is currently in her post-college life stage of Working and Thinking a Lot About Art. Her short fiction can be found in Fantasy Magazine and The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol. 2, as well as previously in Diabolical Plots. Her speculative poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons. She reads submissions for speculative short fiction venues PodCastle and khōréō magazine. Her full portfolio can be found online at https://sarasmessenger.com.
