A People's Future of the United States

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “it’ll make things easier,” Yun says, trying to help though she has no idea how. “you’ll look more…” normal, she doesn’t say, but the word hangs in the air.

  Clementina Astrid nods again. “yes,” she says. “it will be much, much easier without them.” she gestures vaguely toward her head.

  before she realizes what she is doing, before she has had time to really think about it, Yun is holding Clementina Astrid’s cold, clawed hand in her own slender fingers. “and you won’t be alone,” she says through a throat gone suddenly tight. “I’m coming with you.”

  Clementina Astrid releases a giant sigh and leans her head on Yun’s shoulder. the bulk of her headscarf brushes Yun’s cheek and she forces herself to repress a shudder as she feels the movement within.

  “thank you,” Clementina Astrid says. “you know, Yun, you are the only friend that I have left.”

  * * *

  —

  Yun is hesitant to take the train at the end of the day, but she manages to get home without incident.

  for now, she thinks, before she is able to block off thinking entirely.

  Michael has gotten home before her. he’s made her favorite for dinner—vegetable lasagna. Yun would prefer the classic ground-beef sauce, but Michael is vegetarian, and she has given up carnivorism for his sake. not that he asked, it’s just that in general Yun prefers the path of least resistance. recently, however, she has been feeling sharp pangs of craving for meat, so acute that they leave her breathless.

  “how was work?” she asks him.

  “same old,” he says, giving a tired smile. but he always looks tired now; his eyes are permanently red at the rims. “looked at some blood under a microscope, ran some tests. saved the world, you know.”

  Michael works in a lab as a postdoctoral fellow, studying the Undreaming. in theory, he and his lab-mates are on the cutting edge of medical research, the closest scientists in the world to a permanent cure: a way of permanently infusing human genes with inherited Celestial traits.

  from Michael, Yun knows that, in reality, they are nowhere even near finding a cure: though the results were promising in their initial work, the government has steadily reduced funding to the project until only Michael and his supervisor, the famous Jennifer Isling, remain full-time on the research team.

  it was Jennifer Isling—innovator of the Ichor transfusion technique and the first human scientist to successfully demonstrate that Celestials were universally immune to the Undreaming—who had convinced Michael to test their “cure” on himself after five years of funding cuts. the cure consisted of a series of repeated transfusions of Yun’s Ichor over a several-month period as an immunization, followed by deliberate exposure to the virus.

  the cure failed.

  “how’s Dr. Jenn?” Yun asks.

  Michael looks up warily. he pauses a moment before saying, “she’s fine.”

  “good,” Yun says.

  later, as Yun is undressing for bed, Michael emerges from the bathroom and comes up to Yun. gently, sensuously, he puts a hand on her back. Yun turns to face him. in his other hand, he holds a silver catheter.

  tension—sharp, spiky—flares through Yun’s shoulder blades, and she winces, pulling away from him.

  “it’s too early,” she says, knowing in her heart that it doesn’t matter what she says. “the last treatment was only two weeks—”

  “please, baby,” he interrupts her, putting a finger on her lips. “please. I need this. you know I can’t fall asleep anymore. you know it’s getting worse.”

  memory: Yun is on her first date with Michael, three years ago. he has surprised her by seeming genuinely interested in her—her ideas, her opinions—rather than simply interested in her body as a sexual fetish object, the way most humans are interested in Celestials. Yun is accustomed to her body, with its telltale abnormalities, being treated with either revulsion or rapaciousness—the kind of predatory hunger that has followed her all her life.

  but Michael is different. when he undresses her, he looks at her—not just the iridescent traces of scales on her skin or the mottled, unformed growths on her shoulder blades, not just her breasts and cock. he looks at all of her. all of her. he looks deep into her golden eyes, and Yun knows, for the first time, what it is like to be seen as beautiful.

  when he touches her, he is tender and ferocious at once, like the ocean swelling against the shore. he makes her surge inside, and Yun knows, is certain somehow, that nothing will be the same.

  “please, baby,” he says again, nuzzling her neck. his lips are rough and dry. she feels his teeth against her skin and she shudders, pulling away. he pulls her back, not so gentle this time. “please,” he says again. “please, baby. do this for me.”

  months after the failed immunization process, Michael discovered that the Undreaming virus had mutated within his body—despite the regular treatments, the disease was still, somehow, progressing.

  all that can be done now is to help him manage the disease by slowing it and reducing the pain.

  Yun hesitates. it’s been a long day. she has seen seven patients already, and her head is pounding. she looks at Michael’s eyes, which are so, so red.

  “not tonight,” she tries, and his eyes narrow in—rage? hunger? something. she hates him in that moment, as she does almost every night.

  “please, baby.”

  “I’m tired,” she says.

  “tonight. I need it, just a little.”

  “tomorrow, then.”

  “now,” he pleads, and anger surges up in her, so fast and hot that it’s exhilarating.

  “I said no,” she says sharply, rounding on him.

  “FUCK!” he roars, and slams his fist into the wall next to Yun’s head.

  instantly, everything inside her goes cold and still. she just wants to shut him up. to go to sleep.

  “okay, baby,” she says, and he takes her by the arm for the bloodletting. “okay.”

  * * *

  —

  morning. eyes open. alarm blares Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” bathroom. pills. put on makeup, get dressed.

  the subway is full of Sleepless. the clinic is full of other people’s dreams, their needs, their nightmares.

  the days and nights go by.

  * * *

  —

  Clementina Astrid lies on the operating table, waiting for the doctors to begin. Yun stands next to her, holding her hand. Clementina Astrid’s claws dig into the back of Yun’s knuckles, hard enough to hurt. hard enough to break the skin, in fact, but Yun says nothing. she wants to be comforting.

  “I’m gonna be just fine, girl,” Clementina Astrid says—over and over—though Yun has very carefully avoided saying anything implying any concern and tried to keep her face perfectly neutral. “I’m gonna be better than fine. I’m gonna be beautiful.” and Clementina squeezes harder.

  “you’re already beautiful,” Yun says automatically, over the hissing of the serpents. released from their usual hiding place inside Clementina Astrid’s headscarf, the snakes fan out over the operating table, tasting the air with their tongues and baring their fangs. they seem agitated, in contrast to Yun’s studied calm and Clementina Astrid’s compulsive optimism.

  “but you’re right. you’re going to look amazing after this is all over,” Yun adds.

  Clementina Astrid nods. “you’re a good one, you know,” she tells Yun. “I’ve always known it. from the moment I saw you, I said to myself, there she is! a true child of the Twice-Blessed. like you don’t see born anymore. the Ichor of Empusa, reborn.”

  Yun frowns. “Empusa?” she asks. Twice-Blessed, she knows, is an old term for Celestials, which fell out of political correctness several decades ago, but the name Empusa is unfamiliar yet resonant to her all at once.

  Clementina Astrid laughs—an
empty, slightly angry sound. “you young ones and history! what would Empusa say if she knew she was already forgotten? that I—we—let the young ones forget her? the Mother of the House of Chimera, the First House of the Twice-Blessed? she did more for us than any of you hatchlings will ever know.” Clementina Astrid’s face tenses then softens. she shakes her head.

  Yun realizes that her heart is beating faster. she feels hot. her shoulder blades tingle and ache. “tell me more,” she says.

  Clementina Astrid’s eyes are glassy. “my Empusa,” she says. “she started the first of the Houses, and she watched the last of the Houses fall. we were tribes, once. tribes of abandoned children. we were strong! the humans hated us—they’ve always hated us—but we had each other and had the temples. when they made the Undreaming and the poor started to die, they turned on us. took us and bled us for Ichor, one by one.”

  Yun shudders. she has heard parts of this story before, she realizes, in bits and whispers from other Celestials—of a time when the Twice-Blessed were honored by some as messengers from the divine, with Ichor instead of blood in their veins, which could be used to bring visions of the past and the future.

  “made the Undreaming?” she asks. “what do you mean?”

  Clementina Astrid continues without acknowledging the question.

  “Empusa led the resistance. she knew it was doomed to fail. but she led us, thousands of the Twice-Blessed, more than ever seen! and we marched through the streets. and the soldiers came, in their helicopters and tanks. and some of us faltered then, but Empusa kept on. she flew ahead, up in the sky, the first of the Twice-Blessed to fly in over a century. then, the guns. and we ran then, we ran, though she shouted from above to stand our ground. and then we were running, running. there was blood beneath our feet and the air was full of smoke and I saw her then, I saw her breathe fire, like an angel come to change the world.”

  Clementina Astrid pauses, her chest heaving. tears trickle down her dark-brown face as the snakes lash about furiously.

  “I saw her fall. saw her fall from the sky into the crowd and I should have turned back, should have looked for her, should have found her, but I was too scared, I kept running, and that was the last time I saw her. and you, here you are, with her face and her scales, standing here next to me, like her Ichor reborn, and all I can think is, what must you see in me now, Empusa?”

  Yun struggles to think of something to say. the room, she feels, is closing in around her.

  at that moment, the doors to the waiting area open, and two doctors walk in, accompanied by a nurse.

  “we’re ready for you now, Ms. Astrid,” says one of the doctors, a man with reddish-blond hair. “and oh! I see that you’ve gotten a little anxious waiting for us. not to worry, you’re in good hands here. Nurse Remington, if you wouldn’t mind?” the nurse nods and pulls a syringe from his lab coat, which he goes to empty into Clementina Astrid’s unresisting arm.

  the snakes lash out then, sinking their fangs into Nurse Remington’s wrist several times in the space of a second. he cries out and drops the syringe, staggering back as the skin visible between his lab-coat sleeve and plastic glove begins to bubble and redden.

  “I’m going to need you to stop that at once, Ms. Astrid,” says the second doctor, a bald man with a neatly trimmed gray mustache. “we need you calm for the operation.”

  Clementina Astrid struggles to stroke her snakes into calm but only succeeds in provoking them further so that they turn on their mistress, biting her furiously. “I’m sorry,” she whispers—to the snakes, to the doctors, to someone in the universe beyond—sobbing. “I’m sorry, Empusa, for leaving you. but I just can’t live like this anymore.”

  Yun leans forward, ignoring the snakebites that penetrate the skin of her face and neck. she looks straight into Clementina Astrid’s eyes, golden gaze to golden gaze. somehow, she knows what to say.

  come ye haunted, Twice-Blessed one

  the time for Dreaming now has come

  in restless sleeping, wait for me

  I shall return to set you free

  at the sound of the words, the snakes’ furious hissing softens. one by one, they settle down, till the last serpent lies quiescent on the table.

  “thank you, Empusa,” whispers Clementina Astrid, as they wheel her table into the operating room. “thank you for forgiving me.”

  * * *

  —

  when Yun gets home, Michael needs more Ichor. in his dreams, she sees Dr. Jenn, sees him traveling somewhere far away. as they lie in bed, she can feel her scales growing.

  * * *

  —

  she opens her eyes a moment before the alarm on her phone goes off. the regular tune: Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” she reaches over Michael’s sleeping body, lifts the phone off the nightstand, and flicks the alarm off with her thumb. Michael mumbles something incoherent and rolls onto his side, turning his naked back to her. Yun can feel his bare ass pressing against her cock. disgust flares deep in her bones. she pulls away.

  Yun gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, eyes the mirror but quickly looks away. tangled dark hair and bleary golden eyes.

  Yun can’t stop thinking of Clementina Astrid, how she looked lying in the clinic bed after the operation was done. her entire head swathed in a giant cloud of bandages to stanch the bleeding of dozens and dozens of severed stumps. the discarded snakes piled lifeless in a glass jar of formaldehyde beside the bed.

  we’d like to keep these, the doctor said. for research purposes.

  Clementina Astrid lost so much blood that she went into a coma. the doctors said she would be waking soon. when Yun came to visit, she found Clementina Astrid murmuring incomprehensibly in her sleep. she sounded younger, somehow, sensuous and joyful, as though whispering to a lover.

  Yun opens the green-glass pill bottle on top of the sink and pours two round tablets the size of dimes into her palm. she considers them for a moment, then flushes them down the toilet, followed by the rest of the contents of the bottle.

  she goes back into the bedroom. Michael is still lying there.

  he looks so angelic in the mornings, gaunt though he has become.

  Yun slams her fists against the wall. “wake up,” she says, and then slams the wall again. “wake up,” she says, louder.

  Michael starts awake. “what the hell?” he says blearily.

  “get out,” Yun says, and she marvels at the rage pouring like lava through her veins.

  “what the hell?” he says again, and his voice is loud, angry.

  “i said, GET OUT! GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUUUUUTTTTT!” Yun roars, spark and smoke gushing from between her lips. Michael recoils, ashen. he is frightened of her, she thinks. then she realizes that he has always been.

  Yun exhales, and a burst of flame exits her mouth, making Michael yelp and recoil. she feels the inside of her throat blister from the heat of her fire, and she relishes the sensation, how the pain makes her feel both powerful and alive.

  she should have become a monster a long time ago.

  * * *

  —

  after Michael is gone, she gets back into bed and falls asleep. it has been years since she slept so deeply. perhaps a lifetime.

  the Ichor whispers in her veins: of possibility, of promise. and Yun dreams of fire, of ancient temples fallen to ruin, of a street full of a thousand revolting monsters. she dreams of falling from grace. of flight.

  KAI CHENG THOM is a writer based in Toronto, Canada, unceded Indigenous territory. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have been published widely in print and online in BuzzFeed, them., Asian American Literary Review, and Everyday Feminism, among others. She is also the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (Arsenal Pul
p Press), and the children’s book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Arsenal Pulp Press). Thom is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, as well as the 2017 recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ Writers.

  A HISTORY OF BARBED WIRE

  DANIEL H. WILSON

  The boy is tangled up in barbed wire at the bottom of a shallow gully. Must be about eight or nine, by the size of him. Dead maybe a week. He’s wearing a torn gray coat, plastered in dried mud and brown stalks of grass. I can’t quite see his face yet, but I will here in a minute.

  Long as we’re inside the Cherokee Nation, that’s my job.

  Squinting into the sky, I spot the black saucer of my wadulisi recon drone. I signal it with a tired wave of my hand. Out beyond the big maize fields, we’re nearing the gray spine of the tribal border wall. The wadulisi has been loitering up high, blinking police flashers and signaling the roaming grain threshers to stay back. Them machines are thirty tons apiece and they work out here on their own, taking everything the land has to give.

  I hike up my pants and sidestep a little ways into the ditch.

  Back before they had barbed wire, the ranchers and cattlemen of Northeastern Oklahoma planted rows of thorny trees to keep their herds. They called it Osage orange, after the color of its roots. It was horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong, as they used to say. Took a while, but once the trees were grown there wasn’t hardly any way to get rid of them. Those old fencerows, native to this land, sent roots down into the dirt, and their branches swept up into the air, a break against the wind that wanted to strip away the soil.

  Wire come along and took those trees away right around when this whole place got turned into a dust bowl—when the storms were a mile high of screaming black silt laced with lightning and death.

  I stop at the bottom of the gully.