DP FICTION #35A: “Six Hundred Universes of Jenny Zars” by Wendy Nikel

Sometimes I forget which universe I’m in.

It happens most often on days like today. I’ve spent the last twelve hours in the makeshift lab I threw together in the basement of the University, tucked away in some long-forgotten storage closet where the boxes of toilet paper are so old that the brands that produced them don’t exist anymore.

All I want to do now is go home, nuke myself one of those Salisbury steak meals that always burns my tongue, boil a pot of tea, and curl up with a good book. Something fluffy and filled with the kind of one-liners that transcend dimensions, jokes that I can laugh at without worrying whether they have a deeper meaning somewhere else or what my shrink would say.

I ride my bicycle home. It’s the safest mode of transportation when I’m dimension-jumping, and it’s all I’m allowed here. I’ve tried to drive cars in parallel universes, just because no one stops me, but they’re tricky. Even in this dimension, cars have each got their quirks, but elsewhere, those little differences can be deadly. In #497, people drive on the wrong side of the road. In #287 and #381, the gas pedal’s on the opposite side. In #088, they’re all equipped with self-eject buttons, labeled with the same symbol that’s used for in-seat heaters in our universe. Good thing I checked the manual that day.

When I get to my apartment and the key doesn’t fit, I realize I’ve done it again.

Somehow, I’m in the wrong universe.

I duck into the row of rhododendron that run along the edge of the apartment building (they’re magnolias in my universe) and try to sort out my thoughts, figure out where I went wrong. I didn’t see anyone else as I was leaving the lab, but considering it’s a Saturday (unless I’m in universe #185, in which case it’s Bananaday, I kid you not), that didn’t automatically tip me off. The apartment building is the same, beat-up, ugly, low-income housing unit as in my universe, the only place that would let me rent with my record.

I must have overshot my return trip, but to what degree? Am I in universe #549, that uses social media “likes” as currency and that tried to legally elect a toad as president? Or #599, where buffalos are kept as pets? From my limited view through the rhododendron blossoms, it’s hard to tell, though the lack of buffalo droppings on the sidewalk makes me think it’s probably not the latter.

I take a deep breath. I’ll be okay. Just as long as it’s not #600, where all food has been replaced by Ranch Bee’s All-Natural Protein Bars… those things are revolting, and it’s getting dangerously close to dinnertime. I’d rather starve than choke down another one of those.

The dimension-hopping device and my notes are still in the lab across campus, so — despite my stomach’s grumblings — I have to head there first to sort this out. And I have to do so without running into my other self.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I hate myself. As if my own consciousness and what I’d done weren’t bad enough, then there’s all of the alternate ‘me’s whom I have to work around. As far as I know, I’m the only one that’s figured out how to hop from one dimension to the next, and who knows what the other ‘me’s would do if they met me on the street. For some reason, we’re all stuck here in this same pretentious university town with its same pretentious street names (Liberty Row? Freedom Lane? Albert Einstein Avenue?). Me, I can’t help it that I’m stuck here; I’m not allowed to cross state lines. But all the other ‘me’s have somehow gravitated here by some twisted cosmic joke. Probably just to thwart me.

Think, Jenny, think.

It’d help if I knew what universe this was. Then I’d know where the other ‘me’ might be and which of the people and places in this town to avoid. But unless I see a buffalo tromp down the sidewalk on a leash in the next few seconds, hiding in the bushes isn’t going to help.

I step out onto the sidewalk, mount my bike, and enact plan A: ride as fast as I can back to campus, grab the device, and get out of here as fast as humanly possible before I really screw things up.

I’ve just turned onto Madame Curie Memorial Drive when a pickup with 22-inch rims barrels through the intersection, cutting me off and nearly turning me into squashed buffalo dung on the asphalt. I swerve and somehow avert disaster, but the whole time my head is spinning because I’d know that Hulk-green pickup anywhere, in any universe. And here it is, all in one piece, with its fender intact and an uncracked windshield. Which means this is one of the universes where I didn’t take it on an adrenaline-fueled joyride and crash it through Mr. Wilson’s fence, killing his prize dairy cow Buttercup.

“Hey, Jenny! Want a ride?” The voice somehow rises over the engine’s din.

I avoid eye contact and wave a hand in the universal gesture for “go away” (at least I hope it’s universal, that it doesn’t mean something embarrassing here), but I can still feel the truck rumbling behind me. Why can’t he just leave me alone?

Some people believe in soul mates, the one person whom you’re destined love. If such a thing transcends alternate universes, then Lex Fischer is my soul hate, the one person who’s destined to be my downfall.

“C’mon, J-Zars,” he calls, using a nickname he knows I hate (then again, maybe the alternate Jenny here doesn’t mind it). “It’s been almost two years since Dougie’s party. You have to forgive me sometime.”

My feet drop from the bike pedals, stopping me dead on the sidewalk.

So there was a party in this universe.

Seeing the truck in one piece, I’d assumed that none of that night’s events had happened here. But obviously the divergence between my timeline and this one was sometime after the fact. Here was my chance to find out how things might have turned out differently.

I shouldn’t… but my curiosity wins out.

Lex has got the door of his truck swung open for me, but I don’t trust him in this universe any more than I would in any other, so I just stand on the sidewalk and shout to him. “Forgive you for what?”

“For…? C’mon, Jenny,” he pleads. “You know what I mean.”

I hold my ground, though I know what I really should be doing is ducking out of sight, running away, and getting back to my own messed-up version of the universe.

“You know… for slipping the vodka in your drink. It was a joke.”

It was a joke. That’s what he’d said that night back in my universe, right before I screamed something intelligible at him, grabbed his keys, and raced off to his truck. Not my brightest idea, but hey, I don’t handle alcohol well. Unfortunately, since Lex’s dad is friends with the DA, that one bad idea and the involuntary cowslaughter that followed led to six months of jail time, a big, ugly mark on my permanent record, and a parole officer from whom the only escape is darting in and out of parallel universes.

In short, that joke ruined my life.

“Come on,” he pleads. “Can’t you let it go? I called you a cab like you asked! It’s not like anyone got hurt!”

Huh. So that’s how it happened here. Now that I have the information I wanted, I turn and pedal across the grass before I can do something that the ‘me’ here might regret. I duck between two of the University’s buildings at the first opportunity. When I finally reach the building where my makeshift lab is located, not only is the outside door propped open, but the one to the storage area is ajar as well. I throw my bike to the ground, hoping that this universe’s ‘me’ wasn’t too inconvenienced by its disappearance, and press myself against the wall to listen.

No doubt about it, someone’s shuffling around downstairs in the storage area, right where I’ve left the teleport device and my notebook. I promise myself that if I get out of this, I’m going to be more careful about where I keep it. Impatient, I inch toward the door and nudge it open further so I can peer in. After running into Lex, my nerves are rattled, and I need to get out of here now. This day couldn’t possibly get worse.

Except it does.

The body that’s kneeling beside my green backpack is all too familiar. So are the hands flipping through my spiral notebook and the eyes staring at the teleportation device. I chomp down on my thumb to keep myself from screaming at the other ‘me’ to back away and leave my stuff alone. I should’ve known that another ‘me’ would be the one to seek the solitude of this abandoned storage room; that’s totally something I would do.

Her eyes are wide in surprise as she reads the notes written in her own handwriting. Her hand is on the device, now on the dial, now on the button. The button that would shift her from this dimension to another.

I have to say something. My hand is on the door, ready to push it open. I have to stop her before she leaves with my only means to get back home.

Or do I?

If she’s anything like me (which how could she not be?), she’s not going to take no for an answer. She’s not going to sit by and simply watch me go on my way. No, she’s going to want in on this, too. She’d see it as an adventure. So why not let her?

This is what I’ve been searching for all along, isn’t it — an escape from the wrong turns of my past, a universe where Lex Fischer hasn’t ruined my life? And all I have to do is let her disappear from it, and it’ll be mine for the taking.

It’s now or never. Once she’s gone, the device is gone with her, along with it the notebook that contains my last two years’ worth of work. It’d take me months to reconstruct the plans for another device, and even longer to figure out where ‘home’ is from here without my notes on the six-hundred different universes I’ve explored so far. But why would I ever want to go back there, to that universe where I was imprisoned by my past?

I take my hand off the door and step back. A noise like “zolt” fills the air, and I know even without looking that she’s gone. I’ve done it. I’ve stolen my life back.

I duck into the room and grab the purse she left behind. I gleefully rummage through her (my!) class schedule, car keys, and the keys to the off-campus housing that — from the address on the tag — is probably a million times nicer than the place where I’d been living.

I fly up the steps and nearly trip over my bike. Never mind that old thing. I have a valid driver’s license again. At the parking lot, I jam my thumb down on the unlock button, watching for the flashing lights that will indicate which car is mine. A newish convertible winks its headlights at me.

“And this is where the heroine rides off into the sunset,” I mutter to myself as I slide into the driver’s seat. My stomach grumbles a protest. “Fine, fine. First a drive-thru.”

I pull into the drive-thru and nearly ram my brand-new convertible into the car in front of me in shock.

In place of the menu, there’s a giant advertisement for Ranch Bee’s All-Natural Protein Bars, the only food sold here or anywhere else.


© 2018 by Wendy Nikel

 

bw-gp-treeWendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Fantastic Stories of the ImaginationDaily Science FictionNature: Futures, and elsewhere. Her time travel novella, The Continuum, will be available from World Weaver Press on January 23. For more info, visit wendynikel.com

 


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BOOK REVIEW: All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

All Together Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2007, the seventh in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood).  The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie is invited to a national vampire summit as part of Queen Sophie-Anne of Louisiana’s entourage.  Sophie-Ann knows of Sookie’s mindreading abilities and wishes to user her ability to give her an advantage in expected power struggles within the vampire hierarchy.  Sophie-Anne stands accused of murdering her husband (during the events of the last book) and one of the events happening at the summit is her trial, with charges pressed by her husband’s second-in-command.  Also at the summit is Barry, the only other mindreader she knows, who is now employed in a similar position as Sookie to use as an advantage in vampire scheming.  The anti-vampire church the Fellowship of the Sun has been ramping up their hostilities against vampires lately, and so security is extra tight.

Given the premise, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot going on in this book.  Vampires are known for their scheming ways, and so filling a huge hotel with the highest ranking vampires from opposing factions all across the country is bound to be tense and complicated and potentially violent.  There are schemes on schemes and there is plenty to keep the reader occupied trying to predict who is behind what.  In this book, you get to see quite a bit more detail about the internal vampire hierarchy, and there are a lot of other singular moments that let you get a better feel for the broader worldbuilding that we have typically only been able to get small glimpses of from only knowing a few vampires in small communities.

Easily the best in the series so far, by a longshot.  And, major bonus, there is nothing resembling this book in the TV series, so it is all fresh even to a TV viewer.

Award Eligibility 2017

written by David Steffen

The year is almost over, and here we are with the obligatory award eligibility post!

Usually I start with my own stories, but no new fiction written by me has appeared anywhere in 2017, so I will start with the new fiction that’s been published in Diabolical Plots.

ETA: I thought no new fiction written by me was going to appear in 2017, but one new story was published right under the wire on December 30th, so I’ve added that in since it was originally posted.

Please note that I’m not asking anyone to vote for these things.  There is a lot of amazing work out there and I hope you all read as much as you can and vote for what you think is the absolute best, no matter who publishes it.  But I do like to put these posts together partly to look back at what happened this year for myself, and also to put some links together for others who might be interested in checking some of this out.

If you would like to share your own award eligibility posts, please feel free to leave links in the comments to those.

Short Stories by David Steffen

“Cake, and Its Implications” by David Steffen, published at Toasted Cake

Diabolical Plots Short Stories

This was the first year with two stories per month at Diabolical Plots, though not quite for the whole year, for a total of 21 stories.

“Curl Up and Dye” by Tina Gower

“The Avatar In Us All” by J.D. Carelli

“Bloody Therapy” by Suzan Palumbo

“O Stone, Be Not So” by José Pablo Iriarte

“The Long Pilgrimage of Sister Judith” by Paul Starkey

“The Things You Should Have Been” by Andrea G. Stewart

“The Aunties Return the Ocean” by Chris Kuriata

“The Existentialist Men” by Gwendolyn Clare

“Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship” by Rachael K. Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

“Monster of the Soup Cans” by Elizabeth Barron

“The Shadow Over His Mouth” by Aidan Doyle

“For Now, Sideways” by A. Merc Rustad

“Typical Heroes” by Theo Kogod

“Strung” by Xinyi Wang

“The Entropy of a Small Town” by Thomas K. Carpenter

“Lightning Dance” by Tamlyn Dreaver

“Three Days of Unnamed Silence” by Daniel Ausema

“When One Door Shuts” by Aimee Ogden

“Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur

“Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones

“The Leviathans Have Fled the Sea” by Jon Lasser

Semiprozine

Diabolical Plots itself is eligible for the Hugo Best Semiprozine category as a fiction publication.

Editor, Short Form

I am eligible for the Hugo Best Editor, Short Form category, both for editing Diabolical Plots and the Long List Anthology series.

Fan Writer

I am eligible as a fan writer for the reviews of various books (including the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris) and other nonfiction I post here on Diabolical Plots.

Laurie Tom is also eligible for the anime TV and movie reviews she posts here on Diabolical Plots.

 

Other Categories

 

People sometimes ask if the Submission Grinder is eligible for the any Hugo Awards.  As far as I can tell: no.  Which makes sense, the Hugo Awards being a fan-focused award, there are no categories for tools that help writers do their writing business.  Other awards might have suitable categories, such as the Preditors and Editors poll which typically has a category for writer’s tools, or the World Fantasy Award, which I think has categories for websites.

In any case, I really appreciate your interest!

Thanks!

DP FICTION #34B: “The Leviathans Have Fled the Sea” by Jon Lasser

Aye, Lass, I recall the first I saw a mermaid. I was young then, and captain of a whaler — Captain Elizabeth Jackson has a nice ring to it, I always thought. You’d never guess to look at this old lady that I was a whaler once, would you? Bring me a cup o’ the bumbo and I’ll tell you all about the siren: her flashing metal fluke, the cold fishy gleam in her eyes.

Thank you for the bumbo. That’s the stuff! Show me what you brought?

Aye, she was one of mine: the scales overlap just so, like I took them yesterday off the lathe. More than a hundred scales for each tail. No wonder my hands ache so. It’s not just age but the work, too.

And where was I? Oh yes: I was captain of my own airship in those days, the Sea Eagle. Two hundred fifty tons displacement, teak decking, a balloon the like of which you’d never seen. We’d fly from the Sandwich Isles to Russian America in two days with all three propellers spinning on their out-decks. Just to talk of it, it’s like as I can smell the coal burning in the sweet sea air.

Half the whaling fleet had taken to the air after the disaster of ’54, sea-ships jammed up in that Russian ice. They’d gone too far and stayed too long hunting their prey. We should have taken the disaster as we would have a light-blimp warning us away from a mist-shrouded peak, but instead we steered toward that siren’s song.

That was my first year as captain; I was thirty-four, still bright-eyed and hungry to make my fortune. We flew over the Arctic Sea twice, lowering our ladders and dropping food and blankets for the boys we couldn’t fit on deck. Cost a pretty penny, and nearly half those boys made it home alive.

Yes, most sea-sailors were men. You’d be too young to remember. But up in the sky, we didn’t give a pound of sand how your tenders sat. Wasn’t as many men eager to take in that sea air after ’54, nor were lasses so heavy as the men. On a sea-ship, displacement doesn’t matter as much as when you’re balancing against the balloon.

We had a handful of gals with keen eyes who could spot leviathans from one hundred fathoms in the air, and we gave chase. Leastways, we did in the early years. By ’60, we could spend days combing the sea looking for a whale with nary to show for it.

We’d taken them all, you see? Maybe if we’d stuck to sea-ships we couldn’t have found them all, the way we did with air-ships. The Right Whale, the Humpback–all gone.

‘Twas a rain-dappled eve in ’62 when we flew into San Francisco, nothing to show for our voyage but a lot of debt to the colliers, and most of the crew was sleeping aboard ship.

I was pretty skint myself, but stood everyone to some vittles and a round of drinks at The Yellow Dog. Twenty diners digging a deeper hole in my pocket, but if there were whales or anything else worth a penny beneath that briny blue, I’d need a crew.

Everyone ate in silence, and drank their ale. You’ve never seen glummer sailors than these gals. It was Doctor Cross who broached the issue, after I’d ordered a second round.

“Cap’n, the leviathans have fled the sea.” She was the eldest of the crew, and revered by them. Skin the color of coal, she spoke with an island lilt I couldn’t guess and she wouldn’t volunteer. I’d heard tell she’d served on sea-ships in her youth, dressed as a man. “Can you feed us every night, or should we find new ships to sail?”

Rocky stood. She was tall, too tall for a sailor, but had a steady hand and a fearful eye with the harpoon.

“Ya old bat.” Rocky made an obscene gesture at Dr. Cross, but fondly. “It ain’t the leviathans have fled the sea. They’re out there, if we can find them.”

That was what I loved about Rocky, and why she was the whole crew’s favorite: her skull was as thick as a humpback’s, and she’d thrash for days at the end of a harpoon if that’s what it took. Still, I bristled at her calling Dr. Cross old—I was hardly older than our doctor. Rocky was wrong about the whales, but the crew had to decide, not I.

“They’re gone,” Doctor Cross said. One sensible voice.

“You think we fished ’em all out?” Catalina, my first mate. “Could be,” she allowed, “But what’ll we do?”

“Fish something else.” A sly smile crept across the Doctor’s face.

“Nothing pays like whales,” said Rocky. “That’s why we hunt ’em.”

“Mermaids.” The Doctor looked around the table. “Mermaids would fetch a good price.”

“Less work than cutting whales,” Rocky mused.

“No such thing as mermaids!” Catalina laughed.

“I talked with a sailor who saw one off Lahaina just a week ago,” said Doctor Cross. “Perhaps there are more.”

“Wouldn’t make sense to be just one.” Catalina nodded. She ordered another round on my account, and it was agreed. Half the gals didn’t credit the doctor’s tale, but most of those were like the coal engines. I filled their bellies and their hearts, and they followed me as high as the gas-bags could lift us. We were sisters of the sea, and I the eldest.

***

‘Twas off Lahaina, as Doctor Cross had heard, that I saw the sea-siren. Rocky spotted her from the crow’s nest.

“Ahoy,” she called, “That’s a siren off our port bow.”

I spotted her in my spyglass: a spark of light off her tail. She was wiry like an eel, all muscle over tiny bones. Her arms looked like they’d snap off in a current.

Between her waist and hips she looked sickly, a greyish pallor with a sort of sharkskin look, rough and unhealthy. But below that, a huge muscular tail flashed in the sunlight like a fish, green as a copper church-steeple.

When she saw that she’d been spotted, she opened her mouth to sing, but let out only a croak.

Now, we’d not much experience capturing a live animal what would fight back. Whales, we usually bomb-lanced them, blew a hole in the back of their heads. But it went easy, this part: we lowered the crane, which dragged the fishing skein in the water behind us.

“Full speed,” I shouted, and the coal-girls fed the bellies of their engines. The propellers moaned furiously as the steam-whistles blew. The net closed around the mermaid, who flopped angrily as we raised the crane, lifting her on deck.

The siren flopped about, tangled in the net, unable to stand. The crew tugged at the skein, finding the edges and spreading them apart, while the mermaid twisted and screamed.

I’d heard tell that sirens sang sweetly, but this one yowled like a cat who’d wagered her tail in a game of dice. Mayhap their yowling was why that old salt Odysseus had cause to plug his ears.

The screaming did let me know that she could breathe air just fine. I’d half expected her to gasp her gills like a fish, but she wasn’t a fish any more than I was, or the whales had been.

Rocky stepped onto the net and unthreaded the mermaid’s arms from the holes they’d worked into it.

“It’s all right.” Rocky patted the mermaid along her scales, as though she was petting a dog. “Captain, she’s—”

The mermaid’s face twisted from fear to rage quicker than I could follow. She lunged at Rocky and tore her throat out with her teeth, sharp as a great white shark.

I still wonder how Rocky suffered, but right then I couldn’t see a thing: the crew descended as one upon the siren, all but the coal-girls on the out-decks, Doctor Cross, and myself.

“Stop,” I shouted, but too quiet for them to hear me above the mermaid’s final wail. They tore her apart for Rocky, and I didn’t see as I could stop them if I wanted to.

They fed her top half to the sharks, chumming the water with her arms and hunks of her body. But her bottom half—that stayed on deck. Sharks don’t eat brass plate, no matter how corroded by the sea it might be.

I knelt. My knees smashed the deck and I cried out, not from the pain but for Rocky—and for the siren, and for my crew.

‘Twixt the bends and bevels of her fluke plates, their fittings and bolts scattered about, I saw a smaller plate with straight sides and sharp corners: a plaque the size of a calling card, an address engraved upon it. I tucked it away in my vest pocket.

***

I spent that night in a Lahaina boarding house, where I listened to the sailor next door. Her ship had hauled up something, it seemed, for she’d gotten drunk on rum and taken a couple of dock-walking boys up to her room. Boys like that, they would have taken to sea once. Now they thought it woman’s work, and instead they ennobled themselves, strolling the wharves and selling their bodies to sailors.

I told myself the pleasure-wailing that carried through my room’s cheap walls was why I couldn’t sleep. Truth told, it reminded me of that terrible siren’s last moments. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the fear and the rage from her eyes, like she was accusing me of something, and so I lay in bed turning that brass plaque over and over in my hand.

It seemed to me that a man or woman who’d leave a calling card like that would have good reason to be found. ‘Twas a pretty bronze tail, doubtless, but unworthy of such vanity.

Perhaps most of these plaques never found their way into sailors’ hands: tossed overboard and nestled among the oyster shells and empty bottles of some octopus’s garden, or unseen among a tail sold for scrap by a hungry whaler’s crew. Mayhap only diggers and worriers such as I would pocket them, or mayhap only we were foolish enough to have hunted a mermaid.

I still hadn’t shut my eyes by the hour dawn’s pale pink tentacles reached between the shutter slats, and I saw the world through a sleepless haze as thick as our engines’ coal smoke. My heart swayed like the Sea Eagle in a heavy storm, and the plaque felt like a message sung for my ears alone.

***

I’d called for the crew to be aboard ship by the very crack of noon, and they’d come. I kept looking for Rocky among them, but we’d sent her on home to her mother in Canton, Ohio. She’d talked about the green trees and hot summers of her childhood, and I hoped her soul would find peace there.

“You should say a few words,” Catalina said. She scratched an itch on her arm, right next to the tattoo of a whaler’s sandbag she’d had since she’d first taken to the air. “They miss her. They need to know where we’ll sail next.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I croaked like our siren, for I had no answers to give, and nothing but a wordless ache for Rocky. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps my sleepless night lent me an ill humor. It ached behind my eyeballs like a bomb-lance, or a cannonball full of rum.

“Go on,” Catalina urged. “They need to hear from you.”

“Yesterday, we said goodbye to Rocky, and–” My voice cracked again. Doctor Cross put her hand on my shoulder. She aimed to reassure me, I didn’t doubt, but I slapped it away like her fingers were horseflies.

“I don’t know where the waters have taken the leviathans, nor what in the briny blue will fill our bellies and our pockets like they have. But we must set sail.”

“The mermaids,” someone shouted. “Let’s avenge Rocky!”

A cheer went through the crew, but I shuddered to hear it. Dr. Cross looked at me and shrugged. Catalina cheered with the rest of them, and I knew I’d lost my command.

***

I telegraphed the investors and left The Sea Eagle with Catalina in Lahaina without waiting for their reply. They would hire Catalina, or a new captain, or the crew would go pirate and elect one of their own. I didn’t care which as I rode a balloon to the Big Island, to Hilo.

The address on the plaque belonged to a workshop in an alley set back some ways from the wharf.

I heard the drizzle tap-tap-tap against the shack’s tin roof, the rustle of the grass curtain in the doorway.

“Hello?” I called. “Anybody in here?”

“Come in,” said a man’s voice. I went inside. He was a white man, the sort who washed up like driftwood from the sea in tropical villages. He looked newly middle-aged, as though time had ambushed him: streaks of grey in his hair and his half-hearted beard. He looked like a sailor but wore the delicate hands of a gentleman inventor. “Can I help you with something?”

I pulled his calling card from my gunny sack and placed it on his workbench. “You made it?”

“They have names, you know.” He wiped his rheumy eyes. “Who was it?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “She had long brown hair, a body like an eel–she wailed a terrible song…”

“Molpe, then. I never could coax her to a sweeter song.” He sniffled. “She was the first who hadn’t asked to be a siren. How did she die?”

“We caught her in our nets. She killed Rocky–”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Madam. You’re captain of a whaler, then?”

“I was, until yesterday afternoon.”

“And when have you last seen a whale?”

I said nothing.

“They’re gone, you see. The Great Chantey of Being has lost another verse. And, if we do not want to be severed forever from the Lord Almighty, we must sing a new one.” He coughed fiercely; he did his best to cover it, but I saw blood in his handkerchief.

“Mermaids?”

“Sirens. To prey on sailors, who have become too strong. To call them down from the sky and repay their thoughtlessness.” The mechanic had a certain rough tenor to his zeal, the certainty of a man who knew he was dying and was looking on to greater things. I could see what he saw, if only I pointed my spyglass just so. “They’ve taken all the whales, but learned nothing. Something else will be next: the sharks, the tuna.” He shook his head.

And what had I done, when I left my ship in Lahaina?

“Elizabeth Jackson,” I said, “Captain of the Sea Eagle. Former captain.”

“Reginald.” The mechanic shook my hand. “Father of sirens.”

***

He died the next spring, on a rainy April morning, having taught me all his clever fingers’ tricks. The shape of his art wasn’t at all like hunting whales. Coaxing life from bronze, brass, and copper started with the end in mind. It was elaborate, obsessive, and tickled my fancy in a way quite different from sailing above the ocean, finding what was already there.

I felt I owed something to the beasts I’d taken from the sea without knowing the ends of my actions: something added to the world, not taken as though God had laid the ocean out for me like a holiday table.

Yes: I took up Reginald’s chisels, his screw-drivers and shears. I bought a lathe, a hammer better suited to my hand, to continue his work. A bone saw and a surgeon’s needle.

Now you come to me, bearing one of my nameplates, and ask what is to be done about the plague of sirens who bubble up from the briny depths.

I have a question for you in return: how many sailors have you to feed my daughters?


© 2017 by Jon Lasser

 

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Jon Lasser lives in Seattle, WA. He is a graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Galaxy’s Edge, DarkFuse, Untethered: A Magic iPhone Anthology, and elsewhere. Find him on the Web at twoideas.org and on Twitter as @disappearinjon.

 

 

 

 

 


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BOOK REVIEW: Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Definitely Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2006, the sixth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood).  The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie heads to New Orleans to sort out of the affairs of her cousin Hadley who had been turned into a vampire and then killed.  Hadley’s apartment has been placed under a stasis spell placed on it by Hadley’s landlord, the witch Amelia Broadway.  Shortly after the spell is lifted, a newly-made vampire (the werewolf Jake Purifoy) rises within the apartment and attacks them.  Sookie’s new boyfriend, the weretiger Quinn, is also in New Orleans on business, so he helps with the investigation.  With the help of Amelia and her coven of witches they set out to discover how Jake came to be newly raised in that apartment on the same day that Hadley died.

This is where reading the book series become much more interesting to me.  Like the previous book, this one has no season of True Blood that is based upon.  But compared to the previous book I felt like this one was much less scattered.  There was a central mystery that was the main goal of the book, and the characters actively worked toward resolving it, (and there were other major plots that tied into that that I’ll let you discover for yourself).  I enjoyed the completely new characters like Amelia Broadway, and especially enjoyed her and her coven’s involvement in trying to discover the events of the night of Hadley’s death.  And, it was good to see Sookie have a new boyfriend character I wasn’t familiar with, because I didn’t know what to expect from Quinn.

The biggest issue I had with the book had more to do with series planning than about the book itself.  Each of the books in the series starts with some summary of the series and the last book specifically, which is fine, especially given that romance and mystery genre readers may be more likely to pick up a series in the middle.  But, in this case, if you’ve just been reading the books in the series, this one is likely to be confusing because among that “past story” summary Sookie talks about finding out about Hadley’s death.  But… that had never been in any of the novels, and so I spent the first several chapters wondering if I had accidentally skipped a book.  I hadn’t.  It turns out that there was a short story she had written that takes place between the two books and shows Sookie finding out about Hadley’s death and the cause of her death.  This struck me as kind of poor planning to assume one is going to have read a short story in its proper place in the novel series with no way to tell that there even was a short story.  At the very least, an editor’s note to explain what happened would have gone a long way toward alleviating confusion.

Despite that poor planning, it was easily my favorite in the series so far, a very enjoyable read.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead as a Doornail is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2005, the fifth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood).  The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie’s brother Jason, bitten by a werepanther, joins the local werepanther pack that lives in the nearby close-knit community of Hotshot (where the werepanther that bit him came from). Sam Merlotte is shot by an unseen shooter, and so is Calvin Norris the pack leader of Hotshot, and Sookie learns that other shifters have been shot all over Louisiana.  Colonel Flood, leader of the Shreveport werewolf pack, is hit by a car and dies, and someone shoots Sookie as well(presumably because she associated with shifters).  Although the existence of vampires is now public knowledge all over the world, shifters are still a closely kept secret, and so the common element of these shootings is not known to police, but Sookie can’t really tell them the common element either.

For someone who saw the entire True Blood series before starting any of the books, this book is remarkable in that it is the first book which doesn’t have a season of the TV series largely inspired by it.  so it felt new to me in a way that the first four books in the series didn’t, and it doesn’t invite one to play the “was the TV show version or the book version better?” question.

Even so, this one felt a little bit scattered to me.  While it did have a main central question of “who is killing/hurting shifters?” there is so little information to actually pursue that question through most of the book that I didn’t really feel like I was able to be very engaged trying to figure it out.  There was certainly a lot going on, even besides the central shooting thing, so I never got bored, and lacking a TV comparison I didn’t know what to expect, so that was good.

Overall, it was an action-packed read, even though I wished the central mystery had more supporting clues for me to work with to try to guess the shooter, and for my own engagement it was a relief for it to take a big split from the TV show so that I could read without feeling like I’d already been through the story before.

DP FICTION #34A: “Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones

For our one-year anniversary, my boyfriend Kit gives me a knobbly sweater knit in irregular rows of beige, dark beige, and light beige, studded with white yarn blobs shaped like aborted ponies. The left arm—clearly shorter than the right—is tourniqueted midway by red plastic gift ribbon knotted into a bad bow.

Everything but that arm gently undulates of its own volition like jellyfish tentacles, simultaneously guileless and sinister.

“I made this for you, Hakim!” His slightly crooked teeth flash against his black skin like freshwater pearls. “It’s merino wool. Now we can match!” Indeed, Kit is wearing an identical sweater, minus the gift bow. “Go ahead and put it on so I can see how it looks on you.”

Every relationship experiences those crucial moments that make or break you, where you decide whether to commit or bail. This is clearly one of them.

I’ve been smitten with Kit since we met on the dance floor at Boneshaker’s, me in the black suspender tights and feathered fascinator I usually wore for Drag Queen Night, and him in a tacky red-and-blue thrift store sweater that made me think Hipster Independence Day. He bought me a mai-tai with a pink plastic elephant perched on the rim, and I invited him into my booth. Later, I invited him home. Two weeks after that, we moved in together.

That’s when I learned that Kit didn’t just wear those sweaters ironically.

So yes, I’m well aware of Kit’s sweater problem. But this one is undulating.

By now, Kit can read my hesitance in my lack of enthusiastic sweater-wearing. He worries the knit between his fingers, on the verge of tears. “Don’t you like it? It’s hypo-allergenic merino wool. I remember how that scarf I crocheted you for Hanukkah gave you hives all around your neck. This one won’t do anything like that. I promise.”

The sweater’s right arm undulates up Kit’s cheek and brushes away the tears.

“No, Honey, of course it’s not that,” I say. “It’s… well…”

Here’s the thing: Kit is the sensitive sort. Cries at the end of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic season finales, especially the one about the royal gala. I’ve found out the hard way that you can’t just tell him what you’re really thinking, because he tends to take it badly. Better to dial the truth back a few notches. Make it about literally anything else. “I just got back from the gym, and the super-soft absorbent yarn might get all sweaty if I put it on.” The sweater’s arm flagellates my chin three-four-five times. I think it’s trying to strangle me.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. This wool’s naturally anti-bacterial and water-repellent because they don’t strip out all the lanolin. You can wear it in the rain, like a true Scotsman!” During that last bit, he slips into a Sean-Connery-From-The-Highlander voice, because he knows I think it’s sexy when he uses accents.

And you know what? He’s right. I do think it’s sexy. I don’t want to lie to my Kit. So I do the most romantic, stupid thing I could possibly do. I tell him the truth. “Kit, that sweater’s fucking moving. It’s trying to give me a back massage I definitely didn’t consent to. There’s no way I’m going to give it access to my whole body.”

Kit’s mouth opens and closes a couple times. He swallows, that big Adam’s apple bobbing up and down under his soft black skin. His eyes shine huge and teary like when he’s four margaritas in, or when his feelings are hurt, and the feelings-hurter is moi. He’s working so hard not to cry that he can’t squeeze out more than one syllable at a time. “Bu—but it’s our anni—anniversary, and I—I made it—just—for—you…”

And that’s when I realize I love Kit. Like really, seriously, crazily love him, in the let’s grow old on the front porch and yell obscenities at the neighbor’s kids sort of way. He’s worth the endless My Little Pony reruns, and the tacky sweaters (don’t tell him I called them tacky), and even the hyper-sensitivity that creates situations like this at least once a week.

And by Lady Gaga’s meat dress, he’s worth even this tacky homemade Lovecraftian horror. So against my better judgment and sense of self-preservation, I put it on, because that’s True Love.

Kit is so relieved he practically melts into my arms. “It looks so dashing on you, Baby,” he says in his best Sean-Connery-as-James-Bond voice, because most of his fake accents are Connery-related. The hug he gives me makes it all worthwhile, until just like True Love, the sweater’s fibers begin burrowing into my skin.

I ignore the tingling sensation of epidermis melding with hypo-allergenic merino wool, and give Kit the one-year-anniversary kiss he’s been waiting for. “I love you too, Sweetheart.”

He smiles so sweetly at me, and his eyes hood seductively. But when his lips part, he coughs hard, like a cat with a hairball, and something damp and wooly flops behind his teeth. He leans over, coughs and sputters, and with every hacking cough another inch of sweater crawls up out of his throat until with one last retch the whole thing flops wetly at his feet. I look on with horror as the damp thing spreads itself out to dry like a moth from its cocoon, growing larger and fluffier: another hideously tacky sweater, this one bedazzled with Cupids, still damp from his saliva. Kit looks a little embarrassed.

But I’ve already made up my mind. I know what he wants to say. I pick up the Cupid sweater. “How gorgeous. You made this for me, didn’t you?” I pull it on over the first sweater.

“You really mean it? You like them?” He tries to say something else, but he gets all choked up again. After a second hacking fit, another sweater—asphalt gray with orange paisley swirls—crawls out instead. My poor boyfriend wilts a few inches and avoids my eyes.

The new sweater wiggles and flops around my feet, but I don’t hesitate. I’ve made my choice. “I love them.” Then I pick up the paisley one and layer it over the other two.

He’s my Kit, after all, and some sacrifices are totally worth it.


© 2017 by Rachael K. Jones

 

Author’s Note: The so-called “Sweater Curse” is a real superstition among knitters. It states that at some point in a new romantic relationship, a knitter will choose to make their beloved a handmade sweater, and the sweater will destroy the relationship. Interestingly, research finds there may be some truth to it–that for dedicated knitters, making a new romantic partner a handmade sweater often precedes a breakup–although hypotheses vary on why. I personally think it relates to the clash between the TLC that goes into making a handmade gift for the person you love, and the fact that amateur handicrafts can be objectively awful to outside eyes. You see the days and weeks of love you put into the design and knitting, but your beloved just sees a tacky sweater they’re now expected not to just accept, but to wear… in public. If they reject the sweater, they reject you, and the groundwork is laid for the kind of fight that can shatter a relationship. For the sweater-receiver, this is a moment of decision, where you decide whether you can accept the good along with the tacky. As an author who has written stories for particular people before, I can relate to the creative anxiety that underlies the Sweater Curse. Fortunately, my friends are very gracious sorts, and those anxieties have never borne out.

 

headshot-8-28Rachael 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. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael is a World Fantasy Award nominee, Tiptree Award honoree, and winner of Writers of the Future. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and PodCastle. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.

 

 

 


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BOOK REVIEW: Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead to the World is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2004, the fourth 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 4 of the show.  The previous books in the series (in order) are Dead Until Dark, (reviewed here),  Living Dead in Dallas (reviewed here), and Club Dead (reviewed here).

Sookie (fresh from a breakup with her vampire boyfriend Bill)comes across the vampire Eric Northman running down a deserted road, with no memory of his life before that moment.  She finds out that he has been cursed by a coven of witches that have moved into Shreveport and have been threatening Eric and his business interests in order to extort money out of him.  Since Eric is more vulnerable than usual, without his memories, Sookie agrees to hide him at her house for a time; her brother Jason negotiates a fee for her to do this since she is short on money.  But, shortly afterward, Jason disappears and the local police can’t find a trace of where he’s gone.  Sookie fears that he has been abducted by the coven as well.

This story was the best in the series yet.  It had a lot of interesting mystery going on with the missing brother and trying to find out how to combat the invading coven.  One thing that kept it more fresh for me was that although a season of the TV show was loosely based on it, the basis was SO loose that there was still a lot to surprise me, and so I didn’t have the same issue as I had in previous books with wanting to draw direct comparisons between events.  Although that season and this book both involved an invading hostile witch coven, and Eric having his memory cursed away, that’s about where the similarities end.

I was a little worried going in that it would cast all witches as villains–I know a few Wiccans so I didn’t want it to be a blanket condemnation.  But the book had no issue in that regard–the book does differentiate between Wicca as a religion and witchcraft, and there are both witches as allies and witches as enemies in the book, so I was happy to see that.

Also interesting was that, with Bill out of the picture and an amnesiac Eric secretly living in her house, for the first time in the series Sookie gets a real shot at another romantic partner.  Which mixed things up a bit, to keep things interesting.

Like the previous books, it is a quick and easy read with a slight tendency to over-summarize previous books, but is entertaining and fun, and this was the best one yet I thought.

 

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.


© 2017 by Charles Payseur

 

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.

 

charlespayseurCharles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange HorizonsLightspeed MagazineThe 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.

 

 

 


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