Clarkesworld Issue 27

by Clarke, Neil

  It happened gradually, the feeling that they were being watched, were being followed. She had coffee and a man who looked familiar sat opposite her in the café. He went to a party and saw the same man in a different suit watching him carefully. His apartment door was dusted with a fine powder one morning; the following week it was on a window.

  When they went out in the morning, there was always a bunch of people passing their front door. Jauntily, as if just interrupted, they were speeding away, towards, around, moving with a great deal more purpose than on any other block. “Have you noticed it?” Cheree asked, and Johnny nodded. “I asked the landlord, and he said there’s been some kind of gas leak, they’re checking the lines a lot more. Even went into the basement, he said, all up and down the block.”

  “A gas leak?’ she said, sniffing. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “Well, that’s good then.”

  But then Johnny disappeared. Went out to a party and didn’t come back, and when she called the number listed in his daybook, she was told he hadn’t shown up.

  Cheree buzzed in her head when she was near Johnny; she could feel the tingle coming on when she turned the corner, half a block away, so it wasn’t surprising that she felt she could find him. She said to herself: these are the things I know: He has a charge, and I can sense it. He has a head of fiber optic hair. And I am his magnet.

  She took her bike and rode slowly, up and down streets, starting with the top of the island. Her head refused to buzz, block after block, in traffic and out, but then, after three hours — just as she rounded the corner near the docks on the west side — she heard a tang, she felt a nibble at her brain. It was him. She biked forward, back, left and right, testing out the buzzing, following it to the door of a small garage dealing in vintage cars.

  She parked her bike and chained it. She noticed an electric toothbrush rolling on the sidewalk.

  She walked up to a man in a very neat jumpsuit. She didn’t know anything about vintage cars. “I have to get a present for my dear old dad,” she said. “He loves cars. I thought maybe we could all — he had two families, so there’s plenty of children — get together and buy him something smashing.” She grinned.

  He shrugged. “You can take a look at what we’ve got, but my gut says you’re out of your league.”

  She smiled at him steadily, looking around, her eyes skipping to the doorway to an office or a back room. She could feel Johnny’s electric kick. She walked around the cars slowly until his charge was at its strongest. She whipped around “I know you have him,” she said, and drew in her breath, kicking a chair over to trip him as he lunged forward. She bolted for the door, which was unlocked, and burst in.

  There was Johnny, in the corner of the room. They had him wired up to machines that beeped and spit, they had his arm strapped to a chair.

  “I’m all right,” Johnny said when he saw her. She stopped, uncertainly, in the middle of the room.

  “What’s going on?”

  The man in the garage was behind her, and two men came at her from the side. They were all dressed in white jumpsuits, with ties showing through their zippered fronts. “We’re from the collection agency,” one man said. “For unlawful theft of electricity.”

  “We don’t need to pay for electricity,” she said. “We only use our own.”

  “Ha,” he said. “You don’t own it. You’re just stealing it and not paying it. You know what? We put meters into and out of your apartment, just to make sure. You were off the charts! We could hear the volts clicking! Don’t tell me you’re not using electricity!”

  “I tried to explain — ” Johnny said wearily.

  “Did you plug into him yet?” Cheree interrupted. “Then you’ll see.” She looked around and picked up a small calculator on a desk, plugging it into Johnny’s socket. It whirred on, but the jumpsuits looked impassive. She began to enter numbers faster and faster, until finally she rang up Total. “See?” she said, as the men stepped forward almost politely, glancing at the strip of paper (who had such old calculators, anyway?) that had curled out the top.

  “Nice,” the second man concluded. He reached into his pocket. “I’m not with them,” he said. “I’m with NASA and we think you might have stolen a restricted project. We’re going to have to take you with us for national security.” He offered his card.

  “Hold on there,” said the third man, “I’m with the Office of Ocean Exploration. You can’t take him, see here — I’ve got a signed order to bring him in for questioning.” He shook his head. “I mean it’s an invitation. We admire the strides he’s made in making a self-sustaining renewable resource.” He gave a business card to Johnny and one to Cheree.

  The first man took out a gun. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s been taking electricity and we own electricity. It’s that simple. You can’t take him because he’s going to jail, our own facilities in a state-approved housing unit until his case comes to trial.”

  Johnny hung his head and groaned. “I’m no use to any of you,” he said. “These fiber-optic hairs — they’re no use underwater, you know — they need the sun to recharge. Totally useless.” The NOAA man looked a little annoyed at that, but he said, “Who said you had to be under the water; maybe they want you on top of the water?” but even he looked skeptical.

  “Plus, he’s on a pacemaker,” Cheree said. “You can’t have a pacemaker in orbit, if that’s what you were thinking. You’d kill him; what good would that be?”

  The electric company man was looking increasingly smug. “That leaves me,” he said with a smile. “And all I want is for the bill to be paid. Plus interest and penalties.”

  “There is no bill,” Johnny said wearily. “We canceled our account months ago. No account, no bills.”

  “That’s not how it works. You think electricity is free? Like air? Like water? Like land? Are any of those free?” He waved Cheree aside as she said “Air! Air is free!”

  “Nothing’s free,” he said. “The factories pay us for the air they pollute, and you have to pay for cleaning it — one way or another, someone’s paying for it. As for electricity, that’s never been free since Franklin put a key on a chain. Right now, you’re stealing our business by interfering with a regulated industry without a license. It’s against the law.” He looked very merry about it. “I lied about our state-sanctioned facilities. You just go to jail, same as the scammers and the knockoff artists, and you can light your hair up all you want and see what it gets you!” He laughed then, thinking about the possible results.

  “And you agree with this?” Cheree asked the men from NASA and NOAA. They looked at each other and shrugged. “Nothing in it for us,” one said. “We don’t interfere in the private sector,” said the other.

  “Then it’s just you,” Cheree said to the last man, who looked at the others with contempt.

  “It’s okay,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I’m a reasonable man.” He held out a taser gun. “And this is a perfectly legal means of protecting myself.”

  Cheree looked at it and grinned. She glanced up and saw Johnny’s face. “Johnny Volts,” she said, cooing to him. “Johnny, sing to me!”

  Johnny began to hum, and she decided to join him, sympathetically. The men in jumpsuits felt the hairs on their necks begin to rise, then their leg hairs, then their head hairs. The man from the electric company looked around wildly, then took a step towards Johnny, his taser outstretched.

  The taser suddenly snapped and shot a small series of electric arcs out into the air until the utilities man yelped and dropped it. Cheree released Johnny, who rose from his seat and said, “Sorry. But there was a buildup. And Cheree is an amplifier. And I think I got a shot of adrenaline or something that caused an overload.”

  The other two men looked at each other. “Time to go, I think,” one said and the other nodded. They walked off together slowly, as if not wanting to make a sudden move.

  “I’m really sorry,” Johnny said to the man writhing on the floor
.

  “If I could get up I’d clobber you,” the energy man said. “This isn’t over. I’ll hunt you down and do something.” He panted. “Just as soon as I can move again.”

  They followed the mad scientist down to Mexico, all of them imagining the utilities man hot on their trail. Even Tijuana seemed unsafe, so the mad scientist took them to a small town in the mountains, where he continued his work.

  He gave Cheree a pacer, too, and he linked their charge, which was now big enough to fire a microwave, if there’d been a microwave around. But they had a bigger plan. In their mad dash down to the border they’d seen how much gasoline cost; wasn’t Johnny the wave of the future and the future’s savior? And wouldn’t the mad scientist get rewards and jobs and money up the wazoo if he could find a way to recharge a car without looking for an outlet?

  He plugged Johnny into the car he rigged up and called it the Voltswagon. Johnny could only get it to move slowly at first; but once the mad scientist hooked up Cheree to Johnny, and Johnny to the car, they were able to whiz to Tijuana and back at a merry clip. It took four years, but the cars ran and Johnny and Cheree were unharmed, and the mad scientist refined the recharging process to accommodate one person for one car

  Little by little they converted the inhabitants of Tijuana to fiber optic hair and plug-in Voltswagons. Big Oil shut down the borders to keep Americans from going to Mexico to buy cars, but late at night, and hidden in the back of trucks, Americans snuck across the border to buy their Voltswagons and bring them home.

  About the Author

  Karen Heuler writes both literary and speculative fiction and her work has appeared recently in Weird Tales and Cemetery Dance. Her latest novel, Journey to Bom Goody, concerns strange doings in the Amazon. She lives and plots in New York City.

  “To Believe the Magic Is Real: A Conversation with Ed Greenwood”

  by Jeremy L. C. Jones

  Ed Greenwood wanders the floor at GenCon 2008 with his arms full of Dungeons and Dragons miniatures. At one of the country’s largest gaming conventions, just about everybody recognizes him as the guy who created the fantasy world The Forgotten Realms.

  The Canadian library clerk seems unimpressed with how many people stop to shake his hand or ask him to sign a novel or gaming supplement. He’s busy buying mini’s for his granddaughter, but not too busy to share a quick word or catch up with fellow gamers.

  It’s been a few years since Greenwood has showed up at a convention dressed as the wizard, Elminster, who is the protagonist of his most famous series of novels, but he still sports the distinctive long white beard and pageboy haircut. More to the point, Greenwood is infamously friendly and he loves to talk about what he does: write fiction, non-fiction, and game supplements.

  At a signing earlier in the convention, the line wrapped halfway around the hall. People lugged stacks of books from all over Greenwood’s canon — Spellfire, The Making of a Mage, Swords of Eveningstar, Silverfall, The Kingless Land, Dark Lord — and you’d think ever reader knew him personally. That’s how his books feel, personable, just like he is.

  Over the years Greenwood has built many fictional worlds, including Falconfar, Niflheim, and The Forgotten Realms. He’s created them for short stories, role-playing games, novels, and for his own amusement.

  “Some folks collect bowling trophies, some rebuild cars in their driveways, and some try not to miss a single televised moment of football,” he says in the introduction to Castlemourn: A Fantasy Campaign Setting. “I dream up fantasy worlds.”

  “I started worldbuilding in my childhood,” he adds, “imagining what grew into The Forgotten Realms (now a shared world that continues to grow through the dreamings of literally millions of readers and gamers.) It was the first of over a dozen worlds I’ve played with since.”

  Greenwood’s worlds are lively, richly detailed, and fun to visit. Whether as dark as Niflheim or as versatile as The Realms, a world designed by Ed Greenwood is alive and waiting for readers or gamers to delve in. And that’s what is most striking about Greenwood’s worlds: they are welcoming. They also tend to feel both fully realized and full of possibility.

  After meeting Greenwood, it is easy to imagine him smiling and perhaps chuckling to himself as he pounds away at the keyboard. The conversation that follows is a portion of a longer correspondence that started before GenCon 2008 and stretch well into the fall.

  Where do you start building a world?

  As with everything, there’s a caveat: there is no “one and only one right way” [to build a world]. This is just what works for me.

  I’ve been working on the [Forgotten] Realms for over 40 years now, and don’t expect to ever be finished. Over that time I’ve written or co-written almost 200 fiction and game books set in the Realms.

  However, I have seen a tendency in other writers to “never get down to writing that novel” or at least to bog down and get overly delayed, when they try to develop their worlds down to the last scuttling insect and ripening fruit before starting to actually write (as opposed to plan) any fiction. So going the “detail everything” route is obviously a trap for some.

  I think the best initial step for most writers would be to define what they want to use the world for, and for how long. So are you, the writer:

  A. Designing the world to outlast you, and any uses you can immediately see, as I did for the Realms?

  B. Or do you have a contract for a short story due in a month, for which your total payment is probably going to be a couple hundred bucks at most, for which you have to design an original fantasy setting?

  C. Or is your need somewhere in between?

  I suspect, for most people, “C” is going to be the appropriate answer, but let’s look quickly at “A” and at “B,” for the different most-appropriate approaches they point at.

  For “A”, I look at my immediate needs, make them dictate the geographical spots I’m going to super-detail and then start “designing outwards from” until I cover the world, years hence. I start with the spots I need right now, note all the design decisions (trade currents, weather, dominant life forms, etc.) I make that have wider implications, and take each of those implications at least one step. “Well, I’ve said they have severe winters, so therefore…” and I do this process to see if I’ve aimed myself at any problems or conflicts, so I can make changes now, before publication. This isn’t a one-time step, this is how I conduct the process from now on, month after month and year after year.

  A bit daunting, yes?

  “B” is the other end. Although it might be fun to detail a complete fantasy world for such a limited use, it isn’t a wise use of creative time. So in “B”, I plot the story first, and then shape the world to fit the story needs. If it’s a story about a romance between dragons, okay, I need a setting in which dragons live. Do I need that setting to provide conflict or hardships or problems-to-be-solved for my dragon characters? If yes, build ‘em in, and develop the world from there.

  I have talked with writers who just shrug, write the story using placeholders (”He could tell from her purplish snout that she was from XXX. Well enough. He can stomach wyrms from XXX. So they flew on together, over YYY, where the ZZZs were always succulent, and there was no danger of AAAs bursting up out of the trees, shrieking, to attack.”) and then fill everything in when the tale is told the way they want it to. In other words, the world is built to fit the story, and developed only as far as the story needs dictate.

  If this “B” approach is done by someone thinking, “I might just have to come back to this setting in a future story,” they either start applying the “consequences” approach of “A,” or they take refuge in saying as little as possible. (If I have a character say there are only two continents, I’ve shattered my development chances or thrown myself into having to make an awkward explanation… but if the character just mutters something like, “Not many other places open to us,” that’s vague enough and one-character-knowledge-centric-enough to give me ample ro
om to pull any number of other continents out of a hat, later.)

  There’s nothing wrong with leaving the setting “out of the story” as much as possible, so long as it’s in the story enough for the reader to feel as if this is a real, living, coherent place that the story belongs in.

  So, of course, it’s another tightrope walk for the writer. Put in enough to make the setting believable and integral to the story, but not enough to paint yourself into any corners or future corners.

  How did your approach Niflheim?

  My Niflheim setting is featured, thus far, in the novels Dark Warrior Rising and Dark Vengeance). Essentially, it’s an endless subterranean cavern world that I can put whatever features into that I need for my story.

  Driving theme of first book: a human slave seeking to get back to the surface he was snatched from, long ago, who sees his chance and seizes it.

  So, we must have a slave-taking subterranean society, in an underworld that has surface connections, and uses them in ongoing slave-taking raids.

  His chance to do this is an attack on the city of his captors. They are cruel, evil beings (dark elves) and I need to show this. Strife among them is the easiest way to do that, but they also must have rivals (to provide the attackers).

  So I envisage a city divided into factions, both rival noble houses and a secular/religious confrontation (between priestesses and warriors of each house). I need things complicated enough not to have burst into open every-elf-kill-every-other-elf long before my story takes place, but to provide plenty of instances for simmering rage and grudges to build, and small cruelties to be enacted. A great place to hate, in other words, and interesting to the reader. That way, its destruction will mean something to the reader.