L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future 34

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Teese wanted to take me out to dinner, to shows, to operas that neither of us had the slightest interest in. I demurred. We hadn’t been out together since he’d come home with me. At first there had been a steady flow of invites to parties, ostensibly for me but always appended with “Oh, and be sure to bring that hexie who’s staying with you.” But we’d been too wrapped up in each other to go out, and the invitations had slowly dried up. Now we had piles of money and nowhere to go. I wouldn’t have minded taking Teese to a few house parties, but Teese wasn’t interested. “I’ve met lots of humans,” he told me. “Now I have met you. Meeting more humans will just be … disappointing, I think. But I want to take you out, Ami.”

  “I don’t really need to be taken out,” I told him. “I’m pretty low maintenance.” And I don’t want to be lynched, I added silently. Teese might have met lots of humans, but they’d mostly been liberal, East-Coast, college-educated twentysomethings at house parties. As far as I know, he’d never even seen the “we serve octopus” signs I passed on my way to the CITGO. And I wanted to keep it that way.

  We compromised on a museum date in the afternoon. Boston is dripping with museums. We went to the ICA and looked at all the blue things.

  “I think your computer art is better,” I murmured to him, just to see him pink.

  He rippled brown with laughter instead. “I did have unique inspiration,” he said cryptically.

  “Being inspired to pay the rent is far from unique,” I shot back. He just laughed in return.

  That might have been the fifth warning sign; or maybe I’m just paranoid in retrospect.

  The next day, I had a double shift at the gas station. I came home to a dark, silent apartment.

  “Teese?” I called out, groping for the light switch. Maybe he’d gone out?

  Something moved in the darkness. Startled, I dropped my coat and hit my head on the door frame. “Ow! Shit!” My hand finally found the light, and I snapped it on.

  Teese was hunched in the corner of the room, skin soot black. He’d been nearly invisible in the dark.

  “Teese, what’s going on? Are you okay?” As I spoke, I noticed that the little duffle bag he’d brought with him when he moved in was sitting beside him.

  “Ami,” he said quietly. “No. I am not okay. I have been recalled to my ship.”

  I came in and closed the door behind me. “Why? What’s going on? Are the hex … are your people leaving?” I hadn’t heard anything on the news.

  “No,” he said. “Not as far as I am aware. No, this is personal. My commander is displeased with my actions and has terminated my leave.”

  “Your actions … Teese, what did you do?”

  “It’s about my program,” he said. “And about selling my program to my shipmates. This has been ruled, ah, trafficking I believe is the word.”

  “Trafficking? Like your program is a drug?”

  “Exactly like that,” he said. “I told you that it has a strong effect on my people. It has been deemed an intoxicant.”

  “Your art is a drug?” I slid down to the floor, back against the door. “Are you in trouble?”

  He waved a tentacle. “Yes and no,” he said quietly. “If I report to the ship immediately, it will not be so bad for me. I should have left a few hours ago, I think. But I had to speak with you first.”

  “I had a double shift,” I said inanely. “Wait. Wait. Are you coming back?”

  “No,” he said softly. “I will not be allowed to come back. And I have more bad news to tell you.” He was still coal-black, but now his skin blotched red with shame as well. “The money has to go back. Everything my shipmates have paid for the program must be returned. Even though I made a gift of it to you. The ship’s bank will take it back, right out of your account.” His voice had faded to a whisper on the last.

  “But we spent some of it,” I said. I’d go into overdraft.

  “I know,” he said. “I … I will leave you the rhodium. Perhaps you will be able to exchange it soon.”

  I stared at Teese. The red hexagons spun and spun on his coal-black skin. He focused his heart-shaped pupils on the floor.

  “I know the red,” I said, “but what’s the black?”

  He murmured, so softly I could barely hear him, “I am afraid.”

  “You’re scared of what they’re going to do to you?”

  “No. I’m afraid of how I will feel, not seeing you. I am afraid of how it will hurt me.”

  “I could come with you,” I said suddenly. “It’s an interstellar ship, right? And you have yearslong shifts watching over your frozen shipmates? You must have some provision for bringing your partners on there or you’d go crazy.”

  Violent brown lightning flashed across his black-red skin. A bitter laugh, I realized. “Take you with me!” he said. “Ami, don’t you realize? How don’t you realize? You are the problem, Ami, you are the last human they would ever allow on the ship!”

  I felt as if he’d slapped me. “What? Why? How am I the problem?”

  The shame-red bled away from black skin that crackled with jagged, bitter laughter. “How are you the problem!” he repeated. “You’d be a walking riot. My shipmates would fight each other to look into your eyes. They’d beat each other to death to be the one to make you come.”

  “Make me come,” I said slowly. An awful light was dawning inside me. All the times Teese had said he loved to look into my eyes. My greenish-blue eyes. The strange familiarity of his program, as though I’d seen it somewhere before. His greenish-blue program that was, I realized now, the exact shade of my eyes. Just like the sunset that had so captivated him, and just like his “meditation closet.”

  “The way your eyes change,” he said, “Ami, the way your eyes change when you come. The blood vessels, the tiny capillaries, they dilate.”

  I saw it now. “Fractal patterns moving through them, like hexie skin,” I said. “And what you see, you feel.”

  “And what I see in your eyes, I have never seen anywhere else.”

  Teese’s romantic-sounding words came back to me. I have never felt before what I feel with you. He had meant it literally. His limbic system responded to something in my changing eyes with a new emotion, one that none of Teese’s people had ever felt before, while his skin struggled and failed to keep up, lapsing into static.

  I sat with my back against the door and thought back over the past months. Teese had only said he loved me once, in a cheesy e-valentine. But he’d told me that he loved to stare into my eyes at least a dozen times. I’d naively thought that that meant the same thing.

  “I was never your girlfriend,” I realized out loud. “I was your drug.”

  “Please don’t say that,” he said. But I was pettily satisfied to see red shame-spots creeping back onto his black skin.

  I stood up. “You’d better get back to your ship,” I said, moving away from the door. “Just tell me one thing. What did it feel like? What did you feel when you looked into my eyes?”

  He was silent for a long moment. “What is the word,” he said finally, “for a color no one has ever seen? How could there be a word for it?”

  “Was it a good feeling, at least?”

  He closed his eyes. “It was like nothing I’ll ever feel again.”

  He paused at the door, as if wondering whether to kiss me goodbye. I stared him down. He looked into my eyes one last time, and left.

  Once Teese was gone, I pocketed his rhodium and went for a walk. I wanted to hate Teese, but I couldn’t. He’d never lied to me. He’d been telling me exactly what he saw in me from the moment he’d first seen me. I just hadn’t heard.

  And what if I’d been the one given the chance to feel a brand-new emotion, one never felt by anyone before? I probably would’ve taken it. Hell, I’d let an alien move in with me mostly for the sex. And if I’d loved that alien later �
� well, that wasn’t his fault either, not really.

  I fingered the rhodium. Teese hadn’t been able to get anyone to exchange it, but that might’ve had more to do with his tentacles than with the metal’s value. I still couldn’t see myself haggling over it at Jewelers Exchange, but I could probably pawn it for a few hundred to tide me over, and buy it back when I had the money to pay for an assay.

  Because I did plan to have more money. Teese might be a terrific programmer, but he’d never learned to clear his browser history. It’d be easy to find the hexie message boards where Teese had sold his now-banned software. I didn’t need the software. I’d just aim a webcam at my eyes, and the money would come flooding in.

  I’d have dozens of hexies staring into my eyes, chromatophores fluttering. Maybe hundreds of hexies—who knew how many Teese had hooked on his program? Enough to worry his bosses. Enough, I realized, to enforce a ban on Teese if I made it a condition of my show.

  A Bitter Thing by Jazmen Richardson

  It wouldn’t be porn, not in any human sense. Not as long as Teese wasn’t watching.

  I couldn’t truly hate Teese. But I’m only human. And I couldn’t help thinking of Teese, sitting alone in his quarters, skin rippling with regret, while his shipmates watched my eyes as I came. And I felt …

  Well. If I had been a hexie, my skin would have pinked and dimpled at the thought. But I’m human, so I had to make do with a smile.

  Miss Smokey

  written by

  Diana Hart

  illustrated by

  Anthony Moravian

  * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Diana Hart lives in Kent, Washington with her nerd-tastic husband and a panhandling peahen. She speaks fluent dog, wields an epee, and escapes into the woods whenever she can. In fact, “Miss Smokey”—her debut piece and part of a larger urban fantasy setting—is the product of several storm-sodden jaunts through the Olympic rain forest. In the rare moments Diana’s not writing or dangling from a tree, she fills her time with clamming, cake decorating, and loose-leaf tea.

  Storytelling has always been Diana’s passion. Her love affair with the craft stemmed from a well-used library card, enough mythology books to crush a cat, and years immersed in the oral traditions of the Navajo. After a tumultuous migration across the United States, her work took on a more “earthly” note, melding fantasy with narratives inspired by the peoples, customs, and hardships she encountered on her journey.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Anthony Moravian is an illustrator that uses classical techniques to create realistic fantasy themes. He specializes in charcoal drawings and oil paintings. Anthony was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and began drawing at the age of three.

  As a child, Anthony would draw from the collection of comics he had in his basement. He also admired the creativity in fantasy and science fiction stories, and today he works to capture some of their creativity in his paintings. He really began taking an interest in drawing fantasy art when he began playing fantasy-based video games.

  Anthony graduated magna cum laude from the Associate program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Upon recommendation from a professor, he worked sketch nights and events at the New York Society of Illustrators. It was there he began to take a great interest in realistic painting.

  As a result, he began to work to capture some qualities that were often featured in classical realistic paintings while maintaining his interest in fantasy concepts. He currently lives and works in New York as a freelance illustrator.

  Anthony had the honor of being an Illustrator Contest published finalist for L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 33, and his art can also be seen in that volume.

  Miss Smokey

  The squeals of the horde grew closer. I pulled in a breath, thick with wood and old newsprint, and reared onto my hind legs. My knees ached as I staggered to the center of the room. Standing upright was a breeze as a woman, but I was in bear-form, and grizzlies sure as hell aren’t meant to walk that way. My muzzle wrinkled as I pawed my wide-brimmed hat into place and braced for impact.

  A pack of first-graders rounded the corner, flapping coloring books and screeching like howler monkeys on espresso. I snorted. They made a beeline for the menagerie of stuffed wildlife that lined the visitor center walls. Somehow the National Park Service expected coarse rope and a burned wood “Do Not Touch” sign to stem the tide. It never worked. I cleared my throat as the grade-school piranhas reached for their taxidermied victims. The horde turned toward me and eyes and mouths went wide.

  A girl with mussed hair and a Last Unicorn T-shirt raised a chubby finger. “It’s—”

  “That’s right,” I said. Well, rumbled, really. Being a grizzly kind of screws your “inside voice.” I jabbed a paw at them. “Remember, kids: Only you can prevent forest fires.”

  A collective screech hit my ears. I winced and then they were on me. Most were well behaved, content to bounce up and down and jabber at me as if I were some woodland Santa Claus, but there’s always those few who mistake me for a jungle gym. By the time Kelsi and the chaperones arrived, a pair of boys clung to my shoulders and somebody dangled from my ruff. Their prim, proper, perfectly human teacher just laughed and took pictures.

  I clenched my jaw and glowered at the woman. Her heavily moussed curls showed no signs of abuse and her dress was shoe print free. Oh no, her little angels wouldn’t dare treat a normie like this, but shifters? A boy stuck his finger in my nose. I sneezed and wrestled him off my shoulder and plopped him on the floor. According to the president, we’re just animals. And thanks to his Supernatural Registration Act, I’d been downgraded from NOAA researcher to Park Service mascot.

  The remaining shoulder-percher tried to steal my hat. Cooing over his cuteness, one of the chaperones blinded me with a camera flash. My pulse rose. I slapped a paw on top of my hat and weighed mentioning they were technically photographing a topless woman. I knew from experience it’d stop the pictures. I also knew it shrank my paycheck.

  Instead I bit my tongue and locked eyes with Kelsi. The humanoid, five-foot-six raccoon had a child wrapped around each leg and her Stetson hung akimbo. My brow creased. What the heck is it with kids and hats? She shook her head and mouthed “Get on with it.”

  I took a deep breath and bellowed over the din, “Do you know what the number-one cause of forest fires is, Ranger Rick?”

  One of Kelsi’s leg-limpets wiped his nose on her calf. Her tail puffed from irritated to “just-shoot-me-now.”

  “I dunno, Smokey,” she said, sticking to the god-awful script.

  I put a paw on my hip and frowned. It didn’t take much acting. My knees were screaming. “Well, that’s no good.” I flashed a sharp-toothed grin at the pair still yanking my fur. Their faces paled. “Do you know?” They just slid to the floor. My muscles unknotted. Finally. I rolled my shoulders and turned to the horde. “Can anybody tell Ranger Rick the number-one cause of fires?”

  All of the kids babbled their guesses, including a shrill cry of “dragons.” My smile turned just a bit real.

  The teacher finally settled her class in neat, cross-legged rows so Kelsi and I could give our presentation on fire safety, conservation, and how feeding the bears got people mauled. I’d done the routine so many times my brain just clicked to autopilot and let me watch the crowd during our show. Usually when Kelsi started juggling cans and tossing them in a recycle bin, the kids’ attention would drift, but every once in a while, you’d get that one child whose gaze stayed bright, boring into us with a hungry fire. Most wanted to be Rangers or scientists. Others were happy just seeing fellow shifters flash fur after the Registry.

  My shoulders slumped. Today was just window-gazers and coloring enthusiasts.

  After the Hoh Visitor Center closed, I shifted back to human form. Having thumbs and an athletic build was a welcome change fr
om “nature’s tank.” I traded oversized trousers for human garb, grabbed my gear from my locker, and dashed for the trail, my grizzly-brown locks whipping in the wind. I grinned as the air kissed my face. There were a few hours of daylight left, enough to take some readings of the river if I hurried.

  By the time I reached my favorite spot—a fast-flowing curve of water, shielded from intrusion by a steep hike and moss-covered hemlocks—the light had faded to a pale orange blush. Looming night and the glacier-fed river chilled the summer air. Goosebumps spread over my skin as I crunched along the gravel bar. A goldfinch sang somewhere along the far bank and the scent of evergreens and wet earth flooded my senses. My muscles relaxed as nature’s perfume washed away memories of pulled fur, sticky fingers, and painfully boring scripts.

  I headed for a fire-downed hemlock. The charred tree was over a hundred feet long, trailing through the woods, across the bank, and into the river. I set my pack beside the dead giant and admired its blanket of ferns and spindly saplings. My breath slowed in quiet awe. Even in death the trees give life. Snags like this one allowed fresh growth and, when they dipped into the water, sheltered fish and other aquatic fauna. It was the latter I was really interested in.

  I pulled out a flow meter and stake, then waded into the river. Liquid ice hit my calves. I gasped. Good money said it was about fifty degrees, but I’d check that last. My brain didn’t need any help on the “this stuff will give you hypothermia” front. I waded midstream, teeth chattering.

  “You should be watching around you, Lily,” a deep voice rumbled. I clutched my chest and wheeled toward the sound. A black grizzly sat at the end of the snag, camouflaged by the tangle of branches, munching a trout as the water churned about his belly. He fixed me with moss-green eyes. “Dangerous, startling bears.”