Diabolical Plots – Page 48 – From Inspiration to Ink…

BOOK REVIEW: Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

written by David Steffen

Gwendy’s Button Box is a novella written by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, published by Cemetery Dance Publications.

Gwendy is a middle-schooler living in Castle Rock in the 1970s. She is not happy with her life–she never feels quite smart enough, quite thin enough, quite popular enough. She is trying to make her life fit her expectations better, sprinting up the steep Suicide Stairs to try to lose some weight, where she meets a mysterious stranger who gives her the titular button box. If he is to be believed, the buttons lining on the box would have catastrophic consequences of unbelievable, except the red button whose consequences are of a more negotiable scope. It also produces an apparently endless supply of chocolates that are both amazingly delicious and they also quell appetite, as well as valuable antique coins. He leaves her with the box, and she is left with the choice of whether and when and how to use it.

I love the cover art of the book by Ben Baldwin, with the incorporation of the suicide stairs into the man’s arms and the silhouettes at the top.

This book feels very familiar, after reading almost all of Stephen King’s previous works. Castle Rock is a recurring setting. The mysterious man is probably a recurring character (I say probably because I’m not sure his stated name is exactly the same but shifting names are also a characteristic of this character). The overall theme of being tempted with everything you desire without fully understanding the price is a recurring theme of King’s books.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like this one lived up to its potential. With a vast bibliography like King has, self-competition does become a problem. This, to me, felt too much like Needful Things, one of King’s best works, which did the theme much more thoroughly, much better, and at a length that King is (in my opinion) better at. The premise here was reasonably interesting, and solid, but King’s by-the-pants no-outlining writing style reared its head here, because the book rises and rises and then just kind of peters off at the end.

(I realize the book was co-written by Chizmar, but having not read any of Chizmar’s standalone work, I really have not enough familiarity with his writing to have much to say about that part alone)

I love the cover, I would hang that cover on my wall, and if you haven’t read tons of King’s other work, this might be appealing on its own despite its weak ending, but competing against the history of King’s own work, you could pick up quite a few of King’s other books to get the same feel of this one but better.

DP FICTION #33B: “Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur

This is a game. There are rules that must be followed. Isn’t that what you told me when you gave me the gun, when you pointed me at the universe and fired? They are easy:
1. There is a reality where you are the winner. Where you never fear and never want and never lose.
2. The gun destroys realities.

Easy. But I didn’t learn until later, until after you were gone and I was alone, what you meant. Because who would believe it from a man you met at a hotel bar, a tired man with a fading glint in his eye who you still took back to your room despite the crazy shit he was saying? Or maybe I slept with you because of the crazy shit you were saying. Maybe that’s why you gave me the gun, because you saw that I was looking for something in you, something I couldn’t explain until you put that cold length of iron in my hand.

You were smiling when I pulled the trigger. Just for laughs, I told myself, just to make sure it wasn’t real, though the voice in the back of my mind was already asking what if? What if? The most dangerous question in the universe. In any universe. Click.

Like every time now, the first thing I do is close my eyes. It’s what they tell you to do when you’re in a building and the lights go out. Close your eyes. Count to five. Let yourself adjust. The last thing you want to be doing is running around blind in the dark. I count to five. Like always I smell smoke, though the gun never shows any signs of having been fired. It’s like my mind wants there to be some smoking barrel, some proof that something happened.

I open my eyes.

I’m inside a large home. Gleaming white marble floors and high ceilings and windows that look out over a lake. Expensive furniture. I wait as reality catches up with me, as the Assimilation hits. It’s not a word you taught me, but then you taught me nothing but point and click so…

It’s my house. It shouldn’t surprise me except that, reality to reality, I’m normally about the same. I look the same, with thinning brown hair and light skin and brown eyes. I’m bi, though not always out about it and sometimes so deeply repressed I think I enjoy watching swimming for the sport. I like the same foods and the same kinds of movies. And I’m sure I’m not into white marble.

But as the Assimilation lashes me fully to this reality, to this me, I remember that Jason and Abi outvoted me on the décor. My spouses. I smile. And then I move to the window to take in the view of our private lake in eastern Minnesota, bio-engineered miniature triceratops grazing around the banks.

I have rules of my own, now, aside from the two you gave me. The first is that I have to stay in each reality at least a full day unless I’m about to die. Which happens, occasionally, when I find myself in a reality where I’m a pearl diver that gets caught in a shell, or a competitor in some sort of death game, or coughing up my heart because of a deadly contagion, or just poor and in the wrong place. Sometimes I really can’t stay, and breaking my rule seems like a fine idea because fuck those realities anyway. Otherwise I give it a day, to see if it might be the One.

This place has possibilities. I’m a chef, like I always wanted to be, and own the hottest restaurant in the Midwest. Jason is a former swimmer, current coach at the largest private college in the state. Abi is a geneticist, which partly explains the triceratops. I only work three nights a week and have the house to myself at the moment. I wave at the window and it becomes a screen. I open the news, my gestures practiced like this isn’t the first time I’ve had a computer integrated into every surface of my home. But the skills are mine now and I try not to wonder at what really happens to the mes whose bodies I Assimilate. Are they still in here, distinct, or am I some Ouroboros skipping through realities eating myself, over and over again? I wonder if you knew and never told me, or if it really even matters?

The news helps me remember what I’ve Assimilated. The country is a queerocracy of sorts, or at least it seems to be. After a health scare generations ago, natural births have been outlawed and the restrictions on queer relationships not only lifted, they reversed. In the face of a devastating disease that was sweeping through heterosexual communities, a queer majority arose to power and has been setting policy ever since.

Which also helps to explain the triceratops—genetics are leaps and bounds beyond that reality you found me in, to make sure the disease doesn’t resurge. Want a kid? Just apply and one can be whipped up double time, regardless of whose DNA you want to use. Of course, there are articles about discrimination in the application process, but it doesn’t sound so bad. Jason wants kids but I don’t and Abi doesn’t and so we don’t really have to deal with it, and anyway three-parent households like ours get fast-tracked so there’s no rush to decide.

There’s still violence, and there are protests about income inequality and police violence and voting rights and it looks a mess. Does that mean this isn’t my reality? My One? You never really told me how I’d know, and there are days I just stand and stare at the wonders around me and think, is this enough? This is the best candidate I’ve ever seen for a perfect world. For me, at least, and isn’t that the point of the game?

My hand trembles, just the smallest of motions. I need a drink. I squint at a clock. 10 a.m. I head to the kitchen, to my domain, and open the liquor cabinet, remember my last argument with Jason about my drinking. Another thing about me that never seems to change. I find a bottle of bourbon and pour myself a glass and glide into an opulent room with the softest couch I’ve sat on and gesture to the wall to bring up my media library. I have seasons of brand new Star Trek to catch up on. I smile.

Later on Jason and Abi get home and I cook a meal and we all fuck and fall asleep on a bed that would have taken up my whole apartment back in the reality you found me in. I don’t dream. I never dream. In the morning I cook breakfast and wave goodbye to Jason and Abi and go back to the kitchen and do the dishes and then I take the gun in my hand and pull the trigger. Click.

I don’t think I’ll every stop hating you for this. Every day I think about your smile when I pulled the trigger and I think you bastard, you fucking bastard, you know now. You know if it ends with the click or if anything’s left behind. You know if what I’m doing is traveling from world to world or really, truly sending every living thing in a universe blinking out.

I can almost get myself to believe that it’s all still there behind me. That you lied or made it up to torture me or test me. That you’re God come down to Earth to give amazing head and see if humanity is really worthy of being saved and every time I pull the trigger I’m damning not just myself but everyone. It must seem sick that I want that now but at least if you were God you could just bring it back. Whatever I’ve done you can undo and I can burn in Hell a year for every life I snuffed out but it can be made right in the end.

I close my eyes. I count to five. I smell burning. I open my eyes, and I’m in space. Which isn’t really new but rare enough that the novelty hasn’t worn thin. In front of me a planet sits against a plain of stars, The Assimilation hits and I look down to find a report in my hand I’m supposed to be delivering to the captain, who is exactly my type but ever since I slept with her two weeks ago hasn’t spoken to me and has shifted my duty schedule to keep me in engineering.

Not exactly perfect, but I love space. The promise of it. I deliver the report and the captain gives me a smile that says she’s thinking about things and needs some space. I nod and take back the report after she’s signed it and busy myself with routine maintenance. I always love finding that I can do things. Like repair a spaceship. Or play an instrument. I’ve always wanted to be more musical and there’s something exciting about finding out that somewhere in the infinity of universes there is a me who is, something magical about watching your hands move with such confidence doing something you’ve never been able to do before.

Our ship is attacked as I’m repairing duct work, and I remember we’re at war. Not with some alien threat but with a splinter group of humans, ones that left Earth behind for greener pastures. Wealthy people seeking a place they hadn’t spoiled, while other wealthy people who were still making a lot on Earth felt threatened and so started this whole damn thing, which isn’t really being fought by the wealthy at all but by people in love with space, blowing each other up because that’s the only way to see the stars.

We win the fight. I do more repairs and sleep. I get a message from the Captain in the morning saying that we should talk, that we need to talk, but that everything is okay. I take the gun and I pull the trigger. Click.

I wonder how long you did this, how many realities you saw, how many ways you realized that for every good there was a better, for every better there was an even better. I didn’t kill you, I know. If you really did die with the rest of the reality I was born to, then you killed yourself. Yourself and everything I had ever known.

I think if that first new reality had been in space, or with Jason and Abi, I would have just thrown the gun into the deepest ocean I could get to or into space and forgotten about it. Let it all go. Tried to forget I was used to kill a universe. But that first new reality had been…not much. I was worse off than I had been when I met you. Not quite hungry but on my way. Not terrible but when you’re told that somewhere out there you’ve won, that all you have to do is pull a trigger and you don’t even have to see the aftermath?

I count to five. I open my eyes. I’m back in that hotel room where I met you. I freeze, waiting for the Assimilation. I remember you telling me that there are an infinite number of realities out there. Infinite. That they’re blinking out of existence every moment. That it means no reality is really unique, that somewhere out there are an infinite number of copies. Exact copies. So no harm, really, in ending a few. No harm, really, in going around until you find the one that suits you best. Why else would there be a gun, if not to act as some sort of remote control that allows you to find the channel you want to watch, for as long as you want to watch?

The memories are familiar, mine. But even as I fail to find any discrepancy between this life and the one you took from me, I wonder if I’d even know, if the Assimilation would take that from me as well. But I remember some things. The convention, the reason for being in the hotel, it’s the same. My life, the same. My plans, to get drunk in the bar, the same. So is this my reality, my original, somehow spared destruction, or is this a copy of it? And does it matter? And where are you?

If you’re here, I’ll know. I’ll know and I’ll kiss you and then punch you in the face and then maybe together we can get back to exploring the multiverse because it will mean I haven’t destroyed anything. I race to the bar, to the seat where I met you. I look around. You’re not here. I wait. I wait and I drink and I wait and you’re not here and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that means but the gun is digging into my back and I just want to scream, to cry, to do something that will get you out of hiding. You win, okay, you win. Whatever you were trying to tell me or teach me, you win. I scream it. You win. People look at me, make calming gestures, and I pull out the gun and see the fear in their eyes the moment before I pull the trigger. Click.

Should I just give it away, like you did? Find some poor fuck and make them pull the trigger. Find out if I’m still there when they disappear. Would it matter? There’s a universe out there that is perfect, that is fair to everyone and good to everyone. But do I even belong there? Click.

You told me the rules to the game, but if I win does that mean that everyone else loses? Click.

You shouldn’t have given me the gun, shouldn’t have killed my reality, shouldn’t have left me alone with only a half-drunk memory of you to ask questions of, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have. Click.

Every time I pull the trigger, a reality dies. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I count to five. I open my eyes. I drop the gun to the ground, which is grassy and cold with morning dew. You were a coward. I am a coward. And neither of us deserve to win. After a moment the Assimilation hits. A world, a universe like so many others. Imperfect. Full of stars. I pick up the gun.

Author’s Note: This is one of those stories where I had the title first and the idea of this reality hopping game the main character was playing. So for me it was thinking of this game of shoots and ladders, of destruction and bridges, as well as examining the main character’s desire for something better without him having an idea of what that would look like. I tried to explore with the story and the main character the seduction of a perfect life and not wanting to work at it, wanting it given whole and gleaming, and with turning away from imperfection rather than dealing with it or trying to make it better. It went through quite a few drafts, to be honest, so sort of like the story I was never quite satisfied with what I had, but I hope that this version gets across some of what I wanted to say.

Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, The Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews, contributes as short fiction specialist at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

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

THEATER REVIEW: Disney’s Aladdin

written by David Steffen

Aladdin is a play based on a 1992 Disney cartoon movie of the same name. The play premiered in Seattle in 2011, and went to Broadway in 2014.

The story takes place in the fictional Arabic city of Agrabah. The title character Aladdin is a young man, an orphan who has to steal to survive. One day in the marketplace he meets a young woman and he falls for her, but then they are caught by the city guards and the woman reveals herself to be the princess of Agrabah as Aladdin is hauled away to the dungeons. Aladdin is pulled from the dungeons by Jafar, the sultan’s advisor, because a prophecy stated that Aladdin was the “diamond in the rough” the only one that could retrieve the wish-granting genie’s lamp from the Cave of Wonders. Aladdin goes and succeeds in finding the lamp, and is trapped in the cave but becomes the master of the Genie.

The play is based quite closely on the original movie, so if you like the original you’ll probably like this one as well–many familiar songs, plus a few songs that were written for the original but cut before final production of the movie (you might have heard them if you have an Aladdin DVD or Blu Ray with special features on it), and a few new ones as well.

There are some changes from the movie, most often for difficulty of production. There is no Abu, there is no Rajah, presumably because it would be hard to produce them in a compelling way in live theater. There is a Carpet, but it’s just a vehicle, not a character. There is an Iago, but he’s a human, not a parrot. Aladdin has a trio of friends he lives with on the streets–those friends presented some of the best new material, especially the song “High Adventure” which was a lot of fun (though that song and the play as a whole could use some swordfight choreography work.

If you like the movie, you’ll probably like the familiarity and new things about the show. If you haven’t seen the movie, but you like fun and fast-paced musicals, give it a try!

Anime Review: Natsume Yūjin-chō Roku

natsumeroku

Natsume Yūjin-chō Roku is the sixth season of the long-running series (also known as Natsume’s Book of Friends). I previously reviewed seasons 1-4 here and season 5 here.

Natsume Yūjin-chō follows the ongoing misadventures of teenage Takashi Natsume, who has the ability to see youkai (spirits out of Japanese folklore) when most people cannot. Because the series is episodic, it’s generally easy to slip into the middle with minimal knowledge of what has happened in the past, but a few of Roku‘s episodes work better knowing Takashi’s (and his grandmother Reiko’s) history.

Takashi has met other people who can see youkai, and the sixth season features two two-part episodes dealing with exorcists and their relationships with their youkai familiars. Most humans who can see youkai find work in exorcism, which is a practice Takashi dislikes. Like his grandmother Reiko, who wrote down the names of youkai in what became the Book of Friends, he prefers to settle things on more humane terms without imprisoning any wayward spirits.

But he is friends with Natori, who is an exorcist, and because of that friendship Takashi becomes involved with couple incidents involving old familiars and how they behave when the human they were bonded with has passed on. Takashi also has to deal with the knowledge that the Book of Friends is not something he can share (since we learned it was a forbidden practice last season). This creates a real fear in him that he can’t let Natori know the truth about what he’s carrying, while at the same time Natori is aware that there is something Takashi is protecting that he will not share with anyone.

It was a surprising bit of story advancement in a series which largely works as a slice of life with youkai. And that’s not the only revelation, as Roku teases more of Takashi’s heritage, but this time in regards to a different ancestor we have not yet met.

The remaining episodes mostly run with the usual formula of Takashi encounters a youkai with a problem or who is causing a problem. This is not a strike against the series, as that’s long been the heart of the show, but it doesn’t break much in the way of new ground.

There is one episode worth calling out though, for being the first genuinely creepy episode of Natsume Yūjin-chō. Despite being a series about youkai, it’s usually tame with its imagery. Even if the characters are startled, they’re rarely meant to be terrified. “Nitai-sama” takes its cues from more horror oriented fare though, where the youkai is known to be malevolent and takes its time in revealing itself. It’s probably an insufficient scare for those used to actual horror, but the episode is definitely more intense than the usual for Natsume Yūjin-chō and especially will not go over well with people who have a fear of dolls.

Roku isn’t going to win anyone over who isn’t already watching, but for those who are, it’s a surprisingly forward look at potential stories to come. Now the question is, will there be a Natsume Yūjin-chō Nana (Seven)?

Number of Episodes: 11

Pluses: more of the same low key storytelling, plot development for Takashi, lots of lovely stories about the bonds between humans and youkai

Minuses: more of the same low key storytelling, season is on the short side, story doesn’t really do anything with the potential complications that come up

Natsume Yūjin-chō Roku is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled).

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

DP FICTION #33A: “When One Door Shuts” by Aimee Ogden

The whole family wants to know when Mia is going to walk through the door, but no one has asked her about it. No one will.

The front door of Mia’s parents’ house is painted emerald green on the outside, off-white on the inside, with a knob contrived to look like real brass. No one has opened it for six months. Mia hates that door, has hated it for its full half-year of disuse. Ever since the front door of every house on the street became a portal into death.

Or a portal to somewhere else, at least. But it’s the dead who walk through from the other side. The Garcias’ stillborn little boy was the first one to come back, crawling through their open door as a fat, cheerful one-year-old. George Bojanek, who died of a heart attack three years ago in May and who was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Custer, strolled through one day. None of them have anything to say about where they’ve been and how they came back, certainly not the one-year-old and not old George and no one in between.

The doors are a mystery, but the trick of operating them is not. All it takes is someone opening the door from the inside of the house and walking out. And disappearing forever. Dead, Mia supposes. A cosmic tit-for-tat. But no one knows where George Bojanek’s elderly mother-in-law is now, and the Garcia baby certainly can’t tell what happened to his mother’s little niece.

The doors are almost all anyone can talk about these days, though their voices drop when Mia walks into the room. Yes, the doors are inscrutable, but to Mia they’re also infuriating. She visits her parents’ home as infrequently as she can, preferring to keep to her own apartment in her own town, where the doors are just doors and the only expectations hung on her are that she will arrive at work on time and get things done while she’s there.

But whenever she parks on the too-familiar street for a visit, she has to walk around and enter the house through the garage. When the postal carrier rings the bell to announce a package, it means finding shoes and making the tedious trip around. And each time Mia finds her mother standing in the doorway of Allison’s room, pretending to close the door as if she hasn’t been standing there staring into the darkness for hours, she has to pretend she didn’t see as she walks past to the bathroom.

It’s Allison’s room now, and it always will be. Once, it was Mia and Allison’s. For fifteen years, it was. Mia has had the privilege of having her own room, elsewhere. A series of rooms. A dormitory, a studio apartment. Briefly, a roomy space in Lee and Amanda’s attic. White walls, blue, gray. Her scenery has changed; Allison’s has stagnated in three static shades of pastel green with white geometric-patterned curtains, ones that fifteen-year-olds must have considered the very height of style. Softball and Science Olympiad trophies still line the bookshelves. No dust. That much at least is different from how it was when it was still Mia’s room too.

Mia goes into the room sometimes, when she thinks her mother isn’t looking. She’s not certain it would start a fight, but she’s not certain it wouldn’t. She has as much right to be here as anyone. It was her room too, once. And it’s not as if Allison is here to object. She sits on the bed, rumples the spread. Thumbs through the copy of 1984 on the nightstand. Allison liked to say it was her favorite book, though Mia was certain she never actually read it. She flips to the first page and reads: the clocks were striking 13. She slams it shut and throws it back into its place. It slides to a rest against the white plastic base of the bedside lamp.

Sometimes, often, Clayton is downstairs, playing video games with Mia’s younger brother Brandon. Like Allison’s bedroom, Clayton is a relic left untouched in the wake of her passing. If Allison were still here, Clayton certainly wouldn’t be. She would have outgrown him, like she would have outgrown those atrocious curtains. Someone should have outgrown Clayton, because he doesn’t seem to be aware that he ought to have outgrown himself at some point in the last eight years. At least he’s of more utility than the sepulcher of a bedroom. Brandon likes him, anyway, and he’s nice to the kid. And if Mia’s parents aren’t going to discuss the fact that Clayton was the one driving the car that night, then Mia certainly won’t broach the subject herself. Mia was the one who didn’t insist Allison wear a seatbelt. She was seventeen minutes older, and thus, her sister’s keeper. Nothing to keep anymore, except a silent green room and an old boyfriend with male pattern baldness.

There are pictures of both of the twins in the house—all three children, with baby Brandon making his debut during Mia and Allison’s second-grade year. It’s a polite fiction, the window dressing on the household’s grief. No one has ever come to the library in Rochester where Mia now runs the children’s section. But every year, the whole family makes a pilgrimage to Ann Arbor to visit Allison’s first-choice college and med school.

On her birthday—their birthday, Allison can keep their childhood bedroom but not this, not the entire day—there is no party planned, no bright-colored envelope waiting in the mailbox at Mia’s apartment. She bakes her own birthday cake using a box of Betty Crocker mix, as she’s done the past seven years. She adds extra butter to the store-bought frosting to make it taste more like the stuff her mother used to make. No candles. They seem like a waste. She leaves the finished product on her kitchen counter, untasted, before she heads over to her parents’ house for a silent, miserable Saturday afternoon. She’ll go out with her coworkers next weekend: Tobin, who runs the circulation desk, has a birthday at the end of the month, so they’ll split the difference. It’s oddly reassuring to share a birthday again.

She lets herself in the side door using her key. She’s had the same one since she and Allison were old enough to come home from school alone. Her key ring has changed, but the locks have stayed the same. Most things have stayed the same in this house. Mia wonders what will happen when Brandon graduates and goes to college.

Her footsteps are light on the peeling linoleum of the mud-room. She leaves her shoes under the bench, where no one will trip on them. Where no one will wonder what kind of shoes Allison would have been wearing today.

The grade door closes silently behind her, and she ghosts through the house in her stocking feet. She peruses the contents of the fridge, peels back the lid on a container of cold spaghetti, thinks better of it. Her mother might have plans for lunch already. In the basement, Brandon and Clayton shout at their football player avatars on the big-screen TV. There was a time when Scott, her own high school boyfriend, was just as much a fixture in the house as Clayton is now. She hasn’t spoken to Scott since graduation. What is he doing today? She can’t imagine him playing video games with a teenager. In fact, she doesn’t want to imagine him at all. Too hard to think of a life that’s not chained in orbit around that single day. She drifts upstairs instead.

The door to her mother’s room is cracked open. Not far: just far enough for Mia to catch a glimpse inside as she comes up the stairs. She can see her mother, facedown on the floor. Shoulders twitching in great silent sobs. Fingers twisted into the rug.

Eight years. Eight years of this. Mia remembers a class trip when she and Allison were nine, to a petting farm on the other side of the freeway. One of the chickens was missing feathers, open sores mottling its head and sides. While the girls stared, another hen strolled over and lit into the wounded bird’s neck with its beak. “Why did it do that?” Mia asked, and the farmer shrugged: “They just can’t let it alone.”

A break in the smothered sobs. Mia’s mother looks up from the cradle of her arms. Her fingers slacken on the much-abused rug. Her stained eyes meet Mia’s. A flicker of recognition, of contact. And Mia wonders: was this an accidental intrusion on her mother’s private pain? Or was the whole scene staged for Mia’s benefit? Is this just another pitstop on the nearly decade-long guilt trip Mia has embarked on?

And does it matter?

Even in nothing but socks, Mia’s heels bang on the wooden stairs. She likes the sound. For so long, she has tried to be a silent presence in this house, neither seen nor heard. An unassuming hitchhiker on the long road to nowhere. It feels good to make noise. She is here. Let them remember that.

Someone calls after her—Brandon?—but too late. Her hand closes on the doorknob; her wrist twists. She looks back over her shoulder. Brandon’s face, too pale, just behind her mother’s shoulder. Just behind him, Dad, close-mouthed and frowning. Her mother’s arm is outstretched, but as Mia turns, it falls back down to her side.

No turning back now. That would be a cruelty to all of them.

Mia closes her eyes. Time to go.

The front door opens, and Mia steps through.

And into the foyer of her parents’ house.

For a moment, disorientation shakes her. This isn’t right: she should be gone. But everyone is still standing there, silent and staring, just as she left them.

But no, this is not the same smothering sameness Mia has acclimated to. This is not her family’s house, not exactly, not entirely. Not the same family she left behind when she walked through the door. Her mother’s arms are still by her sides, but they come up now, and Dad grabs onto the wall for support. Brandon sits down on the stairs. “Mia,” her mother breathes, and when she tries to say it again, her voice shatters.

Mia takes an uncertain step forward, looks back at the door she came through. “No!” her mother cries, and Mia turns just in time to be crushed in those strange, familiar arms. Brandon wraps around them both, his threadbare teenage pride tossed aside for the moment, and both he and their mother are weeping, and Mia doesn’t understand why until Scott comes up the stairs.

She hasn’t seen him for five years, not since senior year, when they parted ways to different colleges and different lives. She’s never considered what her life would have looked like if she’d hung on to her high school sweetheart. Having Clayton around was always enough of a souvenir of those days. “I thought I heard … ” He looks as if he’s seen a ghost, and of course, he has. “She did it,” he says, and that word, she, hangs over Mia like a cold shadow.

All Mia’s mother can say is how much she’s missed Mia, and she tucks the hair behind Mia’s ear: an uncertain, familiar gesture. They want to show Mia the house, and she lets them. They emphasize the sameness, the house as museum or mausoleum, but she already sees it: every untouched crack in the linoleum, all the foot-worn carpeting.

Somewhere during the tour, Brandon ducks out. He returns with a birthday cake from the corner store, a packet of multicolored candles, and a lighter. While Dad is digging in the farthest reaches of the freezer for a theoretical carton of Moose Tracks ice cream, Mia excuses herself to the restroom.

There are no bathrooms on the first floor, and given the choice of basement or second story, Mia moves upward. There are pictures on the walls in the staircase, as she’s used to seeing. Just like she’s used to, the family history depicted there screeches to an abrupt halt: smiling pictures of the twins, baby Brandon, suddenly stop in the girls’ junior year of high school. The final picture on the wall is as familiar as a reflection, and just as strange: a high school graduation photo. But of course, the face under the tasseled black hat is Allison’s, not Mia’s.

The bathroom is at the end of the hall, but she stops first at the only closed door. It opens at her push, and she leans into the doorjamb as she looks inside. No sports trophies here, only hand-made picture books and a third-place ribbon from a high school poetry contest. On the bureau, a dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead. Mia grimaces, turns her face into the doorjamb. The walls are green and the curtains are patterned in geometric black-and-white. She wonders if she will have to sleep here tonight. She looks over the bookshelves: there is no copy of 1984, not that she can see.

She closes the door quietly, but she wants to slam it.

Mia uses the bathroom, splashes water on her face. When she comes down the stairs, the family is waiting for her, with Scott in anxious orbit. They sing “Happy Birthday” to her. She eats cake and freezer-burned ice cream. No one asks her what has happened to Allison, and she does not tell them.

Aimee Ogden is definitely not six angry badgers in a trenchcoat. She enjoys baking, reading comics, weightlifting, and digging cozy burrows. Her work has also appeared in Shimmer, Apex, and Escape Pod. You can keep up with her on Twitter or at her website.

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

BOOK REVIEW: Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Club Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2003, the third in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris, which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood–this book was used very loosely as the basis for season 3 of the show. The first book in the series is Dead Until Dark, (reviewed here), and the second book was Living Dead in Dallas (reviewed here).

Sookie’s vampire boyfriend Bill has been working on a project to the point of nearly total distraction. Now he has disappeared under mysterious circumstances and Sookie sets out to find out what happened to him. The clues lead to Jackson, Mississippi where it appears that Bill’s former lover and maker Lorena has summoned him (maker as in the one who turned him into a vampire). Clues seem to indicate that he is being held there against his will and their first stop is “Club Dead” the nickname for a major hangout for the supernatural in Jackson. Sookie enlists the help of Bill’s boss and local authority in the vampire hierarchy Eric Northman and newfound ally the werewolf Alcide Herveaux.

After being pretty disappointed overall by the previous book, I was happy that this one was much more satisfying. It still tends to suffer in comparison to the TV show, IMO, but this one differed from the TV show in enough ways to keep things more fresh which made it easier to keep interest (Since there are more books than seasons of the show I’m hoping that some of the books will be entirely new so that I can view those books at least with fresh eyes).

There was plenty new here to keep me interested, from Bill’s secret project, to how the attempt to break Bill out of Russell’s compound, and it kept me reading to the end.

The main thing that paled in comparison to the book was that Lorena, while playing a pivotal role in drawing Bill to Mississippi, was barely onscreen and we never got to learn much of their backstory together. That backstory is explored in much greater depth in the TV show during this season, through flashbacks from the point of view of Bill. The novels stick strictly to the point of view of Sookie, which misses a lot of opportunity for finding out more about the lives of other characters and this was one case where that was especially true. If you like the books, I would highly recommend you check out the TV show to dive much much deeper into the backstory of secondary characters.

All the books are quick reads, and I can burn through them much faster than I can most novels. They do have a tendency to over-summarize the events of past books, which might be helpful if I were reading them at the rate they were published or if I was jumping randomly into the middle of the series. But I think that might be an expectation of the mystery and/or romance genre readers, so that the books are easy to pick up in any order, so it may be an effect of the marketplace rather than the writing.

Overall, I was happy that this one was much better than the previous book, lots of action and mystery to keep things going, as well as a new potential romance element with Alcide. Looking forward to where the TV show and books seperate from each other entirely, so that I can just focus on the happenings of the book without mentally comparing every element to the TV show.

Anime Review: KADO: The Right Answer

written by Laurie Tom

kadotherightanswer

KADO: The Right Answer is an usual piece of science fiction for anime to tackle. While first contact scenarios are about as common in anime as in Western movies, they are usually played for action (when the aliens are hostile) or comedy (when the aliens are not). KADO chooses to begin with an alien whose motivations are obscure by our understanding.

Yaha-kui zaShunina arrives in a giant extra-dimensional cube that lands on top of a passenger plane, accidentally absorbing it and all the people inside. Fortunately, one of those on board is ace government negotiator Kojiro Shindo. When the alien entity does not appear to be immediately hostile and goes to the effort of absorbing the the concept of human language, the two of them begin to communicate.

zaShunina offers humanity a means of advancement, with technology far above what is currently available. We’re not talking spaceships, but an unlimited energy source for humans to do with what they will. He (zaShunina takes on a male appearance but probably does not actually have a gender) likens his offer to a person who has so much of something they no longer have need of it all. If he has more bread than he can possibly eat, why not share it? This is why he has come to give gifts to humanity.

It’s a completely reasonable line of thinking, but naturally wreaks havoc across Japan (where zaShunina landed) and the rest of the globe as it will completely revolutionize industry.

Much of the series deals with how deal with zaShunina’s gifts (because he doesn’t stop at unlimited energy) from the point of view of nations and individuals. It’s not an action-based series and all the human characters are adults, though one scientist is childlike to the point of annoyance, but her mentality works for the story so I’m a little more forgiving than I would otherwise be. People are rightfully concerned about what zaShunina will mean for humanity and whether humans are moving forward too fast.

For the most part the early conflicts move well, featuring reasonable and restrained responses that we hope would be mirrored should any such event happen in the real world.

Shindo is the lead protagonist, but it’s difficult to see inside his thoughts and know him as a person, which is likely why Episode 0 exists. Because he agrees to represent zaShunina in discussions early on, so the anisotropic being has a human representative, he ends up cut off from a lot of the cast. zaShunina also does not fully understand how humans work, so a lot of Shindo’s interactions with him don’t really show him as a person so much as an aide.

This changes later on due to the influence of Saraka Tsukai, another negotiator, who is the designated representative of the Japanese government. While most people are intrigued by the possibilities zaShunina brings them, Tsukai tends to be the one voicing the counterargument, that perhaps it’s best if humanity continues to struggle and advance based on its own labor rather than what an alien being has given them.

KADO: The Right Answer is largely a thoughtful piece, exploring the ramifications of human advancement through alien intervention, and expresses numerous points of view. This is the nice thing about it. We see the cautious and the eager. About the only thing we don’t see are bands of crazy protesters, but barring a few outside shots the story takes place in Japan so it’s possible that this may be more of a cultural difference.

Where it begins to fall apart is towards the end. We know the story can’t just be about zaShunina bringing gifts to everyone, so something happens to raise the stakes, and what happens feels contradictory to the tone laid by previous episodes. The resolution itself is a bit of headscratcher. There’s a small part of it that works, but the rest involves a pretty hefty sacrifice from a couple people that isn’t really discussed before it happened, so it doesn’t feel as polished as it could have been.

KADO is also one of a growing number of CG-animated anime. For budget reasons, CG is getting more popular, but still has difficulty recreating the two dimensional look of traditional hand drawn animation. KADO handles itself fairly well, and the CG is handy for a project like this where there are a lot of alien artifacts that need to look unusual and outside of our reality. The human characters are rendered pretty well too. Though they are clearly computer generated rather than hand drawn, they’re one of the better efforts in recent years.

Overall, I think KADO is a worthwhile experiment. It doesn’t hit the heights it could have, but it’s a worth a look.

Number of Episodes: 12 (13, if including Episode 0)

Pluses: interesting premise, range of human reaction of alien intervention is pleasingly diverse, adult cast

Minuses: negotiation theme ultimately has no impact on the ending, ending requires huge sacrifices that don’t have much setup, pacing is really slow

KADO: The Right Answer is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

BOOK REVIEW: Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Living Dead in Dallas is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2002, the second in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris, which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood–this book was the basis for season 2 of the show. The first book in the series is Dead Until Dark, which I reviewed previously.

In the previous book, Sookie met her first love–the vampire Bill Compton. She’s a telepath and her ability to read minds has proved disastrous to her love life, but she can’t hear vampire thoughts. They are together now, and he is teaching her new things about controlling her powers, as she learns more and more about the supernatural world.

In this book, after a car breakdown and a fight, Sookie is attacked by a maenad, yet another of the supernatural creatures that secretly exists in this world. Bill takes her to Fangtasia, the vampire bar in Shreveport, where the owner Eric Northman has only a little time to save her from certain death. Soon he negotiates with Sookie for her to do some work for him–Eric is the sheriff of area 5, a position of authority to vampires in the local area, and as a favor to another area he has promised Sookie’s mindreading abilities to help with an investigation in Dallas where the vampires suspect one of their human employees of betraying them. Dallas is also the headquarters of The Fellowship of the Sun, a newly founded church dedicated to revealing vampires for the monsters that the church believes them to be. Back in Bon Temps, the maenad’s influence is spreading–she demands tribute to her god, and will drive people mad if her demand is not met to her satisfaction.

This book was decently engaging and action-packed, with Sookie undercover in a strange city, surrounded by both supernaturals that she doesn’t fully understand, and by people who have dedicated their lives to trying to destroy the supernaturals. The plot in Dallas was all interesting and engaging, though I thought it was weird that Sookie didn’t immediately ask why the Dallas vampires didn’t just glamour (a kind of hypnosis) their employees to get the answer.

I found the maenad subplot extremely disappointing in the book. I’m not sure what it added at all, apart from giving us a sense of other kinds of supernatural things out there. The resolution to that subplot just felt like the writer had gotten themselves into a corner and just gave up trying to find a satisfying or epic way to resolve it. I was probably spoiled for it ahead of time because the maenad plot in True Blood Season 2, which was loosely based upon this book, was crazy and epic and freaky and really really good with a really cool resolution.

And, another thing that happened right at the beginning of the book that was extremely disappointing was the death of Lafayette Reynolds. Again, I have probably been spoiled by watching the TV show first, but he was one of my favorite characters in the show, in part because you don’t see a lot of queer people of color in SF/F/H shows. So it was a big letdown for him to play basically no important role in the books at all.

This book was okay. It’s possible that I’ve been spoiled by the higher stakes and engaging nature of the TV show that’s based on it, which probably isn’t fair since the TV show wouldn’t exist without the book. This one soured for me at the beginning with the death of Lafayette and only went down from there.

Anime Review: Attack on Titan Season 2

written by Laurie Tom

attackontitan2

Attack on Titan‘s first season aired far enough back that I don’t have a review on Diabolical Plots to point newcomers to, but suffice to say it’s good! It crosses over to mainstream media much easier than most anime, but the story was clearly far from complete, which brings us to Season 2.

Be aware that there will be first season spoilers as I tackle the second season!

Attack on Titan took four years to return, which is surprising considering how popular it is. Part of the delay was no doubt because the first season had chewed through most of the available manga at the time it was animated, but considering that the second season is only covering one additional story arc, rather than two, I’m not sure why the studio waited so long. The manga has completed three more story arcs since the end of the first season, so from a storytelling standpoint, there’s a lot to work with.

After a brief recap, Season 2 picks up only moments after the end of the first season, with Annie being hauled away while encased in crystal and the Scout Regiment trying to figure out what to make of the mysterious Titan that appears to be inside one of the great walls that surrounds their country.

When a priest hurries over and tells Hange to cover the hole in the wall so the entombed Titan doesn’t wake up, it becomes clear that there are a lot of secrets to their world that some people are privileged to know and others are not. Worse, Titans have appeared inside the greater Wall Rose, which should not have happened unless the wall has been breached.

The Wall Rose invasion kicks off a furious first half of the season as the Scouts try to figure out where, or even if, the wall has been breached. The breach of the outermost Wall Maria at the start of the first season devastated the human population. Losing the middle Wall Rose as well would be a catastrophe.

Worse, there’s a new intelligent Titan involved and many of our fresh recruits have been isolated from most of the military. They are unarmed, without the maneuvering gear that allows them to sling themselves into the air to fight Titans, and they’re about to get surrounded.

After the gut-wrenching opening, the real story this season is figuring out who the enemy of humanity really is, because they are facing something much more complex than the mindless Titans outside the walls. At the end of the first season, Commander Erwin Smith had promised to flush out the Titans hiding among humanity, and in Season 2, he certainly delivers.

Arguably the biggest reveal happens at the season’s midpoint, capping off the manic first half, but the story doesn’t quite regain its footing afterwards.

Though a short breather is nice, the story loses momentum when it stretches past a single episode, which it does. The animators do their best to try to keep the episodes exciting when most of the plot involves people sitting around, but to be fair, they’re constrained by the fact the series has chosen to hew extremely close to the source material and there is a chapter where the characters literally spend the entire time sitting in trees. It wasn’t so noticeable in the manga, but the same chapter fares pretty badly in animation, even with a few additional scenes to break up the view.

Fortunately, Studio Wit knows how to sell a climax and the season swings back to full spectacle with a blood churning rally at the end. The season doesn’t end with many answers, but we do have a better picture of the enemy and even more questions for future story arcs.

Much has been made about the studio only animating half the episodes they did last time, especially since Season 2 started with enough source material to last in the ballpark of 35 episodes, but with the wonky exception of the Colossal Titan, which was clearly an out of place piece of CG, allowing the animation team to focus on a smaller set of episodes seems to have turned out to be a good thing.

Every episode is much more detailed and pleasing on the eyes than the first season, and the first was no slouch when it came to animation. There are fantastic sequences of running along walls, riding through murderous Titans, and soldiers flying through the air with their omni-directional mobility gear. Any random screenshot will have much better shading and line work.

Composer Hiroyuki Sawano returns as well with one of his best soundtracks to date, remixing themes from the first season and adding new favorites, whether it’s the heart-pumping “Barricades” or the thoughtful “Call of Silence.”

Despite the pacing stumble in the second half and the lack of answers, I still recommend Attack on Titan: Season 2 to anyone who enjoyed the first. It plays to the series’ strengths and then pushes itself to become even better at what it does best.

Best of all, on the heels of the season finale, Season 3 was announced for 2018, so there won’t be as long of a wait for the next round.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Gorgeous and highly detailed battle sequences, midpoint plot reveal is a great twist, a lot of side characters from the first season really get a chance to shine

Minuses: A lot of first season questions are still unanswered, sitting in trees episode was unusually boring, pacing is off in second half

Attack on Titan Season 2 is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (dubbed), and aired on Cartoon Network. Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DP FICTION #32B: “Three Days of Unnamed Silence” by Daniel Ausema

A letter would be waiting for me at home, a real physical letter, like the old days. I knew about it, knew what it would mean, as I rushed through the day, calibrating grading bots and marking AI tests. As soon as I met my quota and had the batteries for my hDevice fully kinked, I hurried down to the great rotating front door.

The grunt whose effort powered the door slipped just as I approached. It shouldn’t have been a problem. Engineers work all kinds of failsafes into the systems so what a grunt does won’t go directly into the connected machine. Supposed to, anyway. But for some reason, the grunt’s tripping translated into an interruption in the door’s power, which made the door jerk. I slammed my shin into it, limped inside.

Immediately the grunt was dragged away and another thrust into its place.

I rubbed my leg as I waited for the door to resume its usual rhythm, then headed out to the street. That time of day the busses had so many stops and starts, they were always unwinding their screws way too fast, having to pause and shove in new ones. Better to walk.

I cut across the university lawn, though it was a longer way. It was where my letter would come from. A letter adding, appropriately enough, a few key letters to my name. PhD, it sounded good added to the end of my name. I repeated it in time to my steps. P, H, D, P, H, D.

The sidewalk passed by the university library’s subterranean power station. In a gesture at humanitarianism that no one would insist on anymore, the power station had a wide, narrow window to let in the sunlight. The glass was angled into the side of a subtle rise, so that from the sidewalk I could easily see down into the station. The grunts worked furiously, kinking and winding the batteries that kept the library’s power-hungry devices running. Treadmills fed power to other machines, those not connected to the batteries. A great, horizontal wheel in the center of the station had a dozen grunts around it, all pushing together to wind up the massive battery placed in its center.

P, H, D, P, H, D. I left the library behind and walked past the campus center. Its clock tower beamed out the time into the air before it, with a ticker of class news and information. I focused on it for a moment, and the words expanded in my eyes. Was it announcing the new candidates? Would my name be there?

If I opened up my hDevice, I’d surely see my name right there. It was smart enough to display that portion of the ticker for me without asking. But I wanted to keep the batteries full, and searching with my eyes wasn’t worth the effort. I let myself enjoy the knowledge it was there, probably even pushed to the front for any friends who passed by. Knowing it was enough.

Across campus, I caught a moving walk. A waste of energy, most places, but gravity and high use by students meant it was one place a kinetic sidewalk made sense. I joined the crowds, watched them peripherally as we strolled along en masse. Did they realize what was waiting for me? Could they see the aura of the PhD hanging over me as I walked? One young man smiled as I passed at a faster pace, a shy smile that I returned. A stunning, older woman gave me a frank grin, which I returned as well. I smiled at everyone, wanted to ask everyone their names. Tell me them all!

I kept quiet, only thought the words. Still, there was a glow to the people around me, as if they could hear me asking, could hear my new title awaiting me at home. Maybe I only imagined it. But maybe my giddy mood did transmit in some way.

I got off the walk a few streets later and had to wait for a two-biker to pass, its grunts straining to pull a full cart of riders. My street was lined with high wires, twisted so tightly they hummed. By night they would all be loose, as we powered our houses through the evenings, the screens and dinners of home life. Then I’d be glad my hDevice was charged. Did I have all the numbers, all the people I’d want to tell the good news? I planned out my order as I walked.

By morning the grunts would have the wires set for breakfast and showers and the morning rush. By then I’d be a PhD for real. My first full day with a title to my name.

I took the steps up to my flat two at a time, and the hollow ring of my footsteps repeated those letters. P, H, D, P, H, D. My finger unlocked the door, and my house greeted me, though its voice was oddly subdued.

“Any deliveries for me, house?”

“Yes, Entity 37-58231-K. One delivery.”

Why my ent number? My house had never greeted me that way since I first moved in. I shrugged it off and looked in the slot for the delivery. There it was, a single envelope. My hands shook as I pulled it out.

It wasn’t labeled as university mail.

It was addressed to Entity 37-58231-K.

Inside was a government letterhead, and a letter that would have superseded any other deliveries of the day. Somewhere, intercepted by the nets and screens of the oversight offices, was my acceptance letter, but it didn’t matter anymore. The government letter was brief, direct. “Entity 37-58231-K, your lottery number has come up. You are scheduled for un-naming. While you retain your name, the government thanks you for your sacrifice for the good of all. Know that it is appreciated. Please report to the nearest courthouse or administrative center immediately.”

The letter dropped from my fingers.

***

When your name comes up for un-naming, you run. Not everyone does. It’s hopeless to flee, and many simply submit. But not you.

Before the letter has settled to the floor, you tear outside the flat, take the steps down at a leap. Are the officials already coming up the elevator? Maybe they’re at the foot of the steps, expecting this. At the second floor, you leave the stairwell, run to a window. It opens stiffly, but wide enough to drop through.

Alleys or main streets? Hiding or blending in? Either has its problems, so you stick with the small street you’re on, run as fast as you dare, as fast a pace as you think you can maintain. No sense sprinting only to have to walk once you’ve gone two blocks.

People look as you run past, but not to stare. A glance, you’re noticed, you’re forgotten…mostly. Forgotten until some official comes asking them. Someone running by? Oh, yeah. Late for a bus, looked like. Went that way. Maybe better not to run at all.

You slow down, ease in behind a group of deskies chatting with each other on their way home from work. Do they have titles behind their names? Unlikely, yet they still have names, and that’s key. They are still people, not grunts toiling away to serve modern society. You will yourself to be one of them, title-less but still named.

A police car passes by. You huddle into your coat, ease in close behind the deskies. The car doesn’t slow.

Still unnerving. When the group passes a thickly wooded park, you peel away. There are trees for cover, and you’re tired. Come morning, the chase will have cooled, and you’ll be able to leave the city entirely behind.

There are rumors of places off the grid, where sun and wind give power and grunts aren’t needed. You’ll find it, somehow. Somewhere out in the wastes you’ll stumble across a hidden settlement. You’ll befriend an odd stranger who gives you the secret, once you show you can be trusted. That’s how it works.

So you sleep, hidden inside the evergreen bushes, where the branches weave together into a perfect hiding place. No one will be able to find you here.

You wake up, stumble away before light, only to find the bush you chose already surrounded by police. Their guns whine with the pent up energy of their kinked batteries, and two grunts stand ready to recharge them.

As if you could ever put up such a fight.

The police grab you before you can flee, before you can swing a single fist or evade a single attempt to tackle you. None of which prevents the police from kicking, hitting, beating you senseless before they drag you away to your unnaming treatment.

***

The grunt trudges. It might well be the only way a grunt is allowed to move, after all. Once the surgeries and incisions are done to slice away a person’s name, it may be the only way it is still capable of moving. No grunts have ever done anything to undermine the idea, anyway.

It takes its place at a great wheel, grabbing the sawdust-coated handle with gloved hands. It does not know where that wheel is. The same one in the university library? Or any of countless others across the city? All identical, and any attempt to remember a named life causes a shooting pain in its brain.

The sawdust keeps the grunt’s hands from slipping off the wheel as it strains with the other workers to push. The device gives off sparks as they move, twisting and kinking as much power into its strands as the weave can hold.

After hours of mindless motion, the grunt is done for the day. Or for the shift, anyway. The lives of grunts are not organized around days but shifts. It enters a cramped dorm off the power station, eats a bowl full of protein-rich paste, and falls into its cot to sleep.

Another shift, some uncounted number of shifts later. The grunt is sent out to gather unwound batteries from drop boxes around the city. The same city where it used to live? Even thinking the question is enough to bring the sharp pain just behind its ear. It keeps its head lowered, lets the streetlight fall on its bare head.

After gathering the contents of two drop boxes, it pauses. The street is open. Has it forgotten that flight to freedom? Those rumors of another way to live? Nearly so, but a glimmer of that dream breaks through its namelessness. It weighs the bag of unwound batteries in its hands. To throw them? Smash some windows? A lifetime of viewing batteries as just shy of sacred holds firm, though, and it sets the batteries down beside the road.

It turns in a circle, a dog checking its internal compass, a beast following a pre-human instinct. But it doesn’t lie down to sleep. It dashes for the shadows of the nearest alley. Unnamed and so not entirely human, it no longer fears the rats and trash that clutter the alley. It slithers into the smallest place it can find.

Alas that the grunts clean the alleys so well. Alas that the humans know to watch for grunts on the run, especially those that are new. Its hiding is brief, and by the end of the shift it is back at its labor. Many shifts will pass before it is allowed outside again, and many more before it goes beyond the sight of a human overseer. By then even the glimmer of memory will have faded nearly to nothing.

Over time, grunts come to resemble each other. The hard labor, poor hygiene, and lack of names melds one into the next. What do minor variations in skin tone or gender matter in the face of drudgery? The grunt that was once Entity 37-58231-K loses the hair on its head, grows dense muscles on its legs and chest. Like all the others. The intelligence and drive that once nearly earned it a doctorate fades from its eyes.

The next time it goes out to gather unwound batteries, it never deviates from its assignment. Most shifts it plods along, turning the great wheel in its assigned power station, never talking and never complaining, even in demeanor. Along with the other grunts, it powers the city. And it watches its fellow grunts fall one by one and be replaced by the newly unnamed. The relentless kinking and twisting of modern life.

Until the grunts rise in revolt.

It starts at the wheel, with a grunt jumping onto the top and grabbing the central axle that rises up to the ceiling. The wheel kinks the grunt, killing it instantly. Its death jolts the rest of the grunts away from their work. At first, for a moment, they might flee in fright. But one —is it the grunt once known as Entity 37-58231-K? We may never know —checks its flight and lets the anger of unnaming rise up.

Anger? It should have been silenced with its unnaming. The humans remove much that made the formerly-named a human, a surgery physical and mental and psychological. Yet the sight of the dying grunt brings a measure of it back, and not only in one grunt. It is as if such strong emotion is a magnet, drawing out the same anger in grunt after grunt, until all roar in voiceless revolt.

They charge from the power station. At first, the humans don’t know what to do. The grunts are unnamed, unthinking, powerless. What can you do, when the machinery of society fights back? More grunts join, leaving behind their tasks. Spinning batteries unwind, and the twisting machines fall still. The more that join, the easier for the next to jump in too.

Then the shots begin. The police don’t hold back. Grunt after grunt falls. But what are bullets except another form of drudgery? Shot, they press on, even after a named person might give up. And unshot, they don’t shy from fear. What mental room they’ve pried open for emotion is filled with mob-rage.

And as they advance, the shooting lurches into uncertainty. How many bullets do the police have? How fully are their batteries charged? And who will they send to get more when they run out? Not a grunt. Even a person, named, must rely on the grunts to rush to the storerooms or face catastrophic delay.

The grunts gather strength, swell in unnamed fury. The police fall back, conserve their firepower, fear their loss of control.

This is it, the time to overthrow, the time to take back names. They move in concert down the street. Where to? It is not strategy but mob impulse that guides them away from the power station and toward the crueler power of the city center.

Here, where so much of the city is run, there is a greater stockpile of kinked batteries and ammunition. The humans find their resolve, form into lines, trust in their guns once more. Even the advantages of namelessness aren’t enough to overcome the firepower of mobilized human forces. They crest, push again toward their oppressors, and fall down. As more fall, the anger ebbs into fear, and grunts fall away one by one.

Our grunt, who once dreamed of a PhD, is still among those who fight, a tightening knot of grunts who refuse to concede defeat. There must still be a way to find the city’s weakness. The grunt falls. No, that’s another of the grunts…maybe. Their identities blur. The knot barges as one around a corner. More fall. Ours? They are too alike to know.

A choice lies before them, a split they must take. One way leads to the place where they had their names removed. Might they still reclaim them? Or make sure no one else loses theirs, at least? The other way leads outside the city, into the wilderness where rumors place other escapees.

They veer toward the wilderness. Too slow, as forces move in to stop them, humans with stronger weapons, sure now in their ability to stop the grunts before they run out of power. The knot nearly comes undone as they waver between fight and flight. Perhaps it is our PhD who pulls them together, forces them toward the unnaming place.

It is locked. Humans with guns move in. This time the grunts do not fight back. They take their places before the door, stand tall in the view of anyone who might see. With arms outspread, they stand, are shot, fall.

No humans lament their deaths, only the disruption.

The revolt is over, the nameless grunts forgotten. But the bullets that mow them down damage the entryway into the unnaming place. No one may enter. For several days, no one is unnamed, just when the city most needs new grunts. Only when human workers are able to repair the door can new grunts be made.

Three days of unnamed silence. That is the only memorial, the only name that remains of the fallen grunts and their brief revolution. But sometimes, at the limits of namelessness, the word only approaches, approximates everything.

Author’s Note: The past couple of years I’ve participated in an event called Wyrm’s Gauntlet, which challenges writers with a series of tasks, winnowing the participants with each round. The final task in 2015 involved a quote about how society relies on stripping us of our identity. I’ve forgotten the exact quote, but at the time is struck me and inspired this story.

A writer, runner, reader, parent, and teacher, Daniel Ausema’s work has appeared in many publications including Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction, as well as previously in Diabolical Plots. He is the author of the Spire City series, and his latest novel, The Silk Betrayal, is coming this fall from Guardbridge Books. He lives in Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies.

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