by Matt Moore
PRAISE FOR MATT MOORE
“Subtle power, intelligence, and humanity are the hallmarks of Moore’s work. These stories are apt to stick in your mind like quills. They did in mine.”
—Nick Cutter, author of Little Heaven, The Acolyte, and The Troop
“It’s Not The End and Other Lies is the taut, muscular debut of an original and gifted voice. Matt Moore is a gardener of nightmares, artlessly turning over the dark soil in which the horrors that entangle ordinary people in their killing grasp bloom. If you read one new writer this year, read this one. You’ll thank me later.”
—Michael Rowe, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Wild Fell and Enter, Night
“Matt Moore writes a line that resonates and reverberates with the reader long after the eye has moved on. Moore’s stories are subtle, unassuming, coaxing you in with the banalities of real life—even if the stories themselves are fantastical—only to claw into your heart and mind. Moore’s ideas are plainly in the realm of the supernatural and the monstrous, but his heart is in the humanity of the people that populate his stories; you’ll recognize people you know in Moore’s work, relate to the actions his characters take. Matt Moore’s greatest strength as a writer is conveying the humanity and the possible to the monstrous and the impossible.”
—Paul Michael Anderson, author of Bones are Made to be Broken
“Matt Moore’s words will invade your psyche and never leave you. It’s the best kind of haunting!”
—Marie Bilodeau, bestselling author of Nigh
“Stealthy, cutting, disturbing, immersive. Moore is a student and teacher of tension and fear. That quiet suspicion something will go wrong springs at you from an unexpected direction. A dread creeps upon the unwary reader in his horror, while questioning your faith in humanity is the ticket price of his science fiction. It’s Not the End and Other Lies is a collection of stories about worlds too big to be mastered, families and friendships too small to redeem you, and experiences too marking to exorcise.”
—Derek Künsken, author of The Quantum Magician
“Matt Moore opens up the darkest recesses of the human psyche like a surgeon: incisively, cleanly, compassionately. These stories will grab you and stay with you.”
—Kate Heartfield, author of Armed in Her Fashion, Alice Payne Arrives, and Alice Payne Rides
“Having published Matt Moore in two of our anthologies, I’ve been waiting to see a collection of his brilliant short fiction for a long time. This book does not disappoint. Each piece is a gem—chilling, moving, and always thought-provoking. Settle in: it’s a wild ride.”
—Hayden Trenholm, Publisher of Bundoran Press
“Matt Moore is a master of atmosphere and suspense. It’s Not the End and Other Lies is a phone call from inside my nightmares.”
—Matthew Johnson, author of Irregular Verbs and Other Stories
FIRST EDITION
It's Not the End and Other Lies © 2018 by Matt Moore
Cover art © 2018 by Erik Mohr (Made by Emblem)
Cover design © 2018 by Jared Shapiro
Interior design © 2018 by Ian Sullivan Cant and Jared Shapiro
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author,s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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e-mail: [email protected]
Distributed in the U.S. by
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Moore, Matt, 1973-
[Short stories. Selections]
It's not the end : and other lies / Matt Moore.
Short stories.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77148-450-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77148-451-0 (EPUB)
I. Title. II. Title: It is not the end.
PS8626.O59455A6 2018 C813'.6 C2018-900795-8
C2018-900796-6
CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Peterborough, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]
Edited by Chris Edwards and Sandra Kasturi
Copyedited and proofread by Leigh Teetzel and Errick Nunnally
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
For Joan Frances Garbar (1934–2012),
my first creative writing teacher.
Her initial criticism of my writing still drives me:
“I don’t see enough of you in your writing.”
Table of Contents
Show Your Work: An Introduction by David Nickle
Δπ (“Delta Pi”)
Ascension
The Machinery of Government
Full Moon Hill
Silverman’s Game
They Told Me to Shuffle Off This Mortal, Infinite Loop
That Which Does Not Kill You
In the Shadow of Scythe
Balance
But It’s Not the End
Only at the End Do You See What Follows
The Wall of Gloves
Of the Endangered
Brief Candles
The Pack
The Thing That Killed Her
The Leaving
You're a Winner!
The Weak Son
While Gabriel Slept
Touch the Sky, They Say
Show Your Work: An Introduction
Do you want to know a secret about short story writers? The secret?
Here it is. If we’re doing the job right, we don’t know the secret any more than anyone else.
This at least is what I tell myself, as I flail about on a short story or a novel and feel lost in the weeds of the narrative. I should be lost. . . . If I have a map, I’m doing it wrong, playing it safe. I might be tempted to take a shortcut, answer the question that my characters and narrative pose to me with a pat homily—with a reassuring lie.
I shouldn’t know the secret. But I should be looking for it . . . doing the math.
I’d been doing the math for more than a decade when I met Matt Moore. He was helping out Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory get their publishing house going—ChiZine Publications. They meanwhile were helping me get my book-writing career going; I’d been publishing short stories here and there and having an awful time marketing a couple of novels, and in what seemed like an act of extreme and saintly charity, they were publishing my first story collection.
Matt was handling publicity, helping out—and crucially, paying attention . . . asking those questions himself. At first, I had no idea that this was so: I just knew this kind, lanky gentleman who threw himself into helping books and stories find their readers. Not someone who had stories of his own; and more important, had questions of his own.
And now, nine years later, here we are at the front of Matt Moore’s first story collection. The subtitle calls it a collection of lies. It is that—all fiction is after all a sprawling, consensual fib. But I would also submit that this is additionally a collection of hard questions. It is not a collection of easy answers.
So maybe it’s not so much of a package of lies as that.
See,
Matt does do the math, and shows his work too. The opening story in this collection, “Delta Pi,” does that literally, as it asks what remains when a fundamental constant becomes variable. The binary question of whether to jump from a height or celebrate the altitude finds its answer in the moment. Another story delivers its moment in a sharp punch—for after all, where there are gloves, can a body blow be far behind?
You’re in for a treat, as you step into first one and then another of these twenty-one collected stories by Matt Moore. But a treat is not the same thing as a confection. Not here.
Matt knows well enough to open the door to mystery and let us all in on the barest glimpse of the secret. So enjoy; and when you’ve taken a moment to think the truth of it through . . .
Endure.
David Nickle
Toronto, 2018
Δπ (“Delta Pi”)
The digital clock on my desk, synched to the same atomic clock as the facility, reads 11:48:05. One hundred fifteen seconds left.
I tell myself it’s my true understanding of Cünzken that brought—and kept—me here. This once tiny town of Smythers. Where Cünzken was born and grew up. Yet I can’t discount insanity, either. They say the truly insane aren’t aware of their madness. And only a madman would come here if he believed what Cünzken predicted in his fifth paper. But for three years I’ve been told only a madman could believe Cünzken’s predictions.
I don’t know if I believe, but at least I understand. That’s more than I can say for those working at the facility.
My students don’t notice my momentary distraction. They stare out the windows at the noontime prairie. A lump of resentment settles in my throat. If I could stand—instead of being stuck in this chair—I might command a bit more respect. I rap on the whiteboard to get their attention. “Who knows what the mathematic constant Pi is?”
“It’s like,” a student begins, her eyes still focused outside, “the difference between how far a circle’s across and how far it’s around.”
“Close.” Maybe I should be more impressed by a fourth grader expressing the basic concept of Pi. Considering their parents are research scientists and assistants at the facility built to test the Cünzken Equations, I’m judging on a curve.
Turning toward the board, I wheel myself from behind my desk. I draw a circle on the white board, label it “C,” a diameter I label “D,” and then write an equation infinitely simpler and more immutable than any of Cünzken’s: π = C/D. “Pi is the ratio of circumference—how far a circle is around—to its diameter—how far it is from one edge to the other. It’s an unchanging constant and a fundamental building block in math.”
Nothing. Gazing out the window. I resist looking myself. Looking again at Liz Polaski in her white cotton blouse and grey pencil skirt, red hair in a loose ponytail. I’d say she’s in her mid-40s, almost twice my age, but I guess I have a Mrs. Robinson thing. She has her English class sitting out in the grass, reading to them from some book.
And honestly, I don’t want to look past Liz, past the five-metre high chain-link fence that borders the school property. Beyond it lies the facility’s 4,000-hectare grounds. Its main complex towers above the endless, even horizon like a watchful god. Beneath its grounds, right now, supercharged particles are travelling at near–light speed in a twenty-kilometre long, magnetically-guided circular track. Their collision will tell us if Cünzken’s predictions were forty years ahead of their time.
Or perhaps the collision has already occurred.
I force myself to not look outside, not look at the clock. If I can focus on the lesson, so can my students. But the knowledge that I should be on the facility’s staff, not pretending to be a teacher because it was the only job I could get, gnaws at me.
A pulse of pain throbs behind my eyes. I shouldn’t let myself get so worked up.
I push my chair’s wheels in opposite directions to face the class, but I don’t turn as much as I want. Maybe I need the chair looked at. I give an extra push to face them.
“Can we do this outside?” someone asks.
“No,” I reply, my voice lacking a polite, teacher-like tone. Only ten more minutes until lunch and it’s not like I want to be here anymore than they do. Not to mention another twinge behind my eyes. “We’re going to do an experiment. If we finish before the bell, you can leave.”
Faces turn. Attention is given. Leaning on my elbows, I draw a circle with a large, chalk-tipped compass on a piece of corkboard on my desk. Then I measure its diameter, write the figure on the whiteboard and grab the box of pushpins from a drawer. “Everyone come forward and take a pin. Put them around the chalk circle. I want the whole circle filled in.” The students do as instructed, eager to get this over with. They watch me wind a string around the circle of pins, measure and write its length on the whiteboard. “Now, we have diameter and circumference. Back to your desks and tell me what Pi equals.”
They rush to their seats. Hands unzip backpacks, calculators clatter on desks. Not helping my headache.
I look at the clock: 11:52:44.
Since reality didn’t rend and tear a hundred and sixty-four seconds ago, I assume the research team is pouring over the data from the collision.
A deeper, more bitter pang of resentment grabs me. Even with just a Bachelor’s, I understand the Cünzken Equations at a more fundamental level than most of the PhDs working there. Having found the bars and coffee shops where they hang out, I’ve talked to them, flirted with the women. Learned what I could about the experiments. Tried to find a way onto the team, even as a junior assistant. I had to be close. Had to know more. At first, they were curious how a grade school teacher knew so much, but then I’d go and mention Cünzken’s fifth paper.
Sure, they’re all about the first four papers, theorizing how a particle collision could create a stable wormhole by unrolling a micro-dimension to travel along. But they dismiss his fifth paper with as much fervour as I embrace it. They laugh me off, turning back to their drinks. Just like my advisor calling me mad when I proposed doing my thesis on the fifth paper. He refused to accept it and wouldn’t write a letter of recommendation. So despite completing my Bachelor’s at Caltech in less than two years, my career is going nowhere.
I can’t help it. I look outside—
The headache must be worse than I thought. My eyes can’t focus, like the complex is over the horizon.
“Three point three,” one of my students says.
Another: “Three point two six.”
“Three point two five nine.”
More voices shout, throbbing in my head. I hold up my hand for quiet and ask, “Did everyone get something like three point two six?”
Heads nod. I grab a calculator. This is the first time I’ve done this experiment with the pins and string. There’s a sampling error since the pins form a multi-sided polygon, not a true circle, but the ratio should come up short.
“Can we go?”
“You promised.”
A few keystrokes later and I see the ratio’s correct. How could I screw this up? Though something about Cünzken’s last paper nags at me, I say, “Sure.”
They burst from their seats and run for the door, amplifying my headache. A few seconds later, they go streaming across the blacktop. Liz tells them to walk in that unquestionable tone veteran teachers have before returning to her reading.
Rubbing my temples, I tell myself I’m not bitter that I’ll never run. Never be part of the group. Always be on the outside. Maybe it’s ego, but these headaches give me a sense of kinship with Cünzken. By all accounts, he was an overlooked, bookish kid who suffered from headaches growing up in a town of farmers and tradesman. Friendless, he spent a lot of time wandering alone outside of town. Good grades got him into college, odd jobs around town allowed him to afford it.
Once there, he remained bookish and friendless, yet excelled in his studies. Working at a part-time job, he invested his earnings in the stock market, studying its fluctuations, and made a fortune
. He received his PhD less than four years after enrolling in a Bachelor’s program.
But his skills at predicting stocks brought him fame, not his research. He taught sporadically, never remaining at a university for more than a few years before being let go. His four papers were published in obscure journals over a fifteen-year career. Described as “esoteric” and “alchemic” forty years ago, it wouldn’t be until results from CERN showed Cünzken had been right all along.
He often returned to Smythers, buying up the land outside town where he’d wandered as a kid and the facility sits now. As a man, he took long walks out there, pondering his theories. Despite Smythers being a farming town, this land had always sat fallow, the few farmers who’d owned it saying nothing would grow there. Small-town rumours of the land being cursed amplified when the few people who knew Cünzken reported he used to say nature would talk to him out there, whispering its secrets to him.
These rumours cast Cünzken as peculiar, but his fifth paper turned people against him. In it, he took his equations further, to an ultimate conclusion. Testing his theories, he warned—and theoretically demonstrated—would open a Pandora’s Box. An unravelling reality beyond human comprehension. Like probing the mind of God, it would bring obliteration, not enlightenment.
Yet reading his fifth paper changed my perceptions of the world. I didn’t understand how anyone could fail to grasp the irrefutable conclusion that the fabric of reality is an oversimplified illusion. That our three-dimensional perceptions had evolved to protect us from reality’s true nature. Physics and mathematics rested on a delicate framework that would collapse with the slightest nudge. So many of my classmates just didn’t get it, only able to see his graphs in the two dimensions of the page, not the five he’d intended. Judging variables as unknowns needing to be solved, not as true unknown factors to which we three-dimensional beings could never assign values. I debated it online, enduring endless insults and finding no one who truly understood the elegance of the equations.