by Tricia Reeks
“I mean,” she said, “you aren’t getting any of my milk. If that’s what all of this is about. You seem a bit fixated on me, and you know a lot about lactation.”
“Oh,” he said. “No, I was—was just trying to shock you with the lactation comments, and now it seems I’m the one—”
She laughed too hard to retort and then kissed his sweet stammering mouth. She felt a rush of warmth toward him that wasn’t just lust.
Mr. Sharp walked over to the wall and opened his blinds to what the Zeppelin brochure dubbed a Tru-Window, made to look like a view of the ever-changing sky. A faux-sun rose to orange, then burned to white, then receded back to orange before disappearing to blackness and faux-stars. The full rotation took moments and was utterly false. It was seen as a great luxury in the airship, but Maggie personally thought Mr. Sharp was a far better luxury, even if he showed bad taste in paying for a Tru-Window.
She smiled at him across the room. Due to her, his top half was naked now. He was lean and muscled with long dreadlocks hanging over his shoulders. His bright blue eyes looked at her unflinchingly. The orange light danced across the dark stubble on his triangle chin.
Maggie bounded across the room. She jumped on him, expecting to take him down and get his trousers off, but instead he threw her on the bed and within seconds, had all her clothes off like he had skinned an apple. He did this as he kissed her with such fever she didn’t know how he breathed.
Maggie had the sweetest struggle to break away through the pleasure in order to please. As the faux horizon went from dawn to dusk, she only got to kiss him a few times before he pulled her on top of him and gave her pleasure like none she could remember. His face, going from dark to orange to white with the window light, showed as much bliss as she felt.
It did have to end, and when it did Maggie shivered into his body and laughed when she felt the cool steel ball of the toy owl roll up her bare back in his hand. The man quickly reached behind him to turn on a soft light and grab his thick strapped monocle. He only took seconds to fasten it on; then the little golden owl chirped and whirred and flew up to Maggie’s face as if to say hello. She giggled at his toy. There was night outside for the moment.
“It really is beautiful,” she said.
“I’ll give you a special one for your baby. I—“
She kissed him quiet. Perhaps she should ask him his actual name.
“I told you, I have no baby. I’m just filled with hormones and milk to care for them.”
“That’s not all you’re filled with. CADD is actually more than a toy. It’s a Cognitive Amnesia Deleting Device.”
She stiffened and sat up. “Deleting a Cog-Am is impossible!”
“You don’t remember meeting anyone smart enough to break one,” he said with a smirk.
He rolled his eyes at her as if they were trading wits then made a motion with his head and the owl flew away from her and to the room’s desk where it shut itself off. Mr. Sharp took off the monocle.
“I’ve frightened you. I didn’t mean to. Well, I did a bit . . . None of this is going as planned.” He sighed.
He had planned this! To frighten the time traveling wet-nurse for some warped political cause, no doubt. Maybe he planned to manipulate her Cog-Am, turn her against all she stood for. She had heard such horrors were possible. Another outsider who thought he knew what was best for women and their children. She pretended to gather her clothes as she looked for the security alarm trigger. When she saw it above the door behind him, she jumped to hit it with her palm.
“What did you do?” His eyes closed and fists clenched.
“It’s a silent alarm. Ship security is much tighter than you’re led to believe,” she said.
“I was led to believe a lot and now—wait? You called security? You do realize you’re naked. I’m not going to hurt you, even after all you’ve done.” He laughed at her, but she was far from laughing.
“All I’ve done,” she said. “You people see me as a child abuser because I do this work, so you plan to—what? Abuse me in kind?”
“You really have no idea who I am. Get your clothes on. They’ll be coming. Been in this situation before, yeah?” he said as he retrieved his pants from the hand-carved dresser.
“I’m sorry I don’t recognize you from whatever misguided movement you’re from. I don’t often live in the present. But I assure you, I’ve never been in this situation before,” she said.
She slowly stepped away from him, backwards toward the door.
“I did not take this job to shag the rich,” she said “I work on this ship to help children and their mothers. Maybe it’s you who have me confused with some other pudgy wet-nurse.”
She gasped as he pulled her to him, put his lips on her forehead and pulled them off with a smack.
There was a knock at the door. “Security.”
“You’re not pudgy. You just had a baby.” His words came faster now. “But, it was really years ago, and you’re keeping her an eternal infant.”
“I have no baby!” she cried.
“Maggie,” he said, “stop lying!”
“What did you call me?” Her eyes were wide as saucers.
He had called her Maggie. She felt confused and aching and something else, like fear of falling off the ship into the ever-changing sky. All the possibilities swirled in her mind, and they all involved one thing—family, and not her own. She had no more family. And no baby. The rich and powerful Dowds had already taken everything from her when they took their son, and now they wanted the baby she didn’t have?
Security pounded on the door. “We’re terribly sorry, but you’ll need to open the door or—”
“Help!” she shouted, and the door crashed in.
The events happened so quickly, and Maggie dropped to the floor to figure them out. She realized she was still not afraid. She couldn’t fear losing what had already gone.
After a flurry of sounds and moving body parts, two security men lay on the ground holding their faces where Mr. Sharp had hit them but somehow managed to remain untouched. Maybe he was an extremely expensive mercenary. It was surely the only explanation, or at least the only one she would accept.
“The baby has to grow up,” he whispered as he knelt to where she sat on the floor.
“You are damned good,” Maggie scoffed, “The Dowds found a true believer with endless physical skills. Tell me, how much are they paying you?”
“Listen—” he said.
“No! You listen to me. Tell them they won’t win this one. They can’t. My baby died in the womb.”
“What?” he roared.
Maggie’s head buzzed.
More security in black-plated armor surrounded the man and wrestled him to the ground, shouting. But, Maggie just kept at him.
“Don’t be so distraught,” she said. “You’ve completed your mission.”
She tried to stop her voice from shaking. Her brain was filled with foolish ideas. Deleting a Cog-Am was impossible—she knew this.
Still she stood over him with pressured speech as security tried to push her back.
“I don’t know why they would want my baby now. I was the only one who wanted her. When she was sick inside me I came to this bloody ship thinking it could save her. I’ll throw you a copy of the report in your cushy cell to prove she was never born.”
“You wouldn’t have been the only one who wanted the baby—“
A blow to Mr. Sharp’s head silenced him, and they dragged him off.
Maggie screamed.
As she sank to the ground, the remaining Security-bobs asked her questions. They thought the man had hurt the wet-nurse. They couldn’t be more wrong. There was really only one man who would have wanted her baby, Dugland Dowd. But his parents had forced him to forget everything he knew.
***
Dugland was behind the bars of the ship’s brig. Even with a black eye and under stark light, Maggie thought he looked pretty. His presence forced color and real light into the white starkness.
He was shoeless and shirtless, wearing only his bright blue pants and hanging suspenders.
“I’m not pressing charges. Let him out,” Maggie said softly to the ship’s bobby, a broad, older man with a white handlebar moustache.
“’Fraid not, Ma’am. This one caused a load of trouble. Maybe next time don’t be so quick to push the panic button when you get frisky.”
“Leave her alone,” Dugland spat at the bobby. Then he looked at Maggie. “So you’re here to give me the report on your miscarriage? Tell me, this supposed family I’m working for, do you hate them all?”
Did he really think she still didn’t know who he was? Well, she had been ignorant so far.
“No, the baby’s father—his parents were wrong and awful for forcing a Cog-Am into him so he’d forget me, but they weren’t wrong about him being too young.”
“Too young—” he cackled, “I heard he was just months shy of being of age and not young of mind, but maybe he was a fool because he thought you loved him. That you—”
“He was too idealistic to see . . .” she began. A chasm of pain opened in her throat.
“You sure you’re remembering him right with all you’ve had erased with that bloody gadget?” he said, pointing to the Cog-Am in her wrist. He folded his arms and looked away.
Maggie couldn’t find her voice to explain.
“You should go. Didn’t you hear the bobby?” he said. “You’re nothing more than a loose wet-nurse.”
“He’s right,” the bobby said as he came to her side. “Move along, lest I put you in there with him.”
“If that’s what it takes.” Maggie stamped the bobby’s foot as hard as she could. As he groaned, she raced to the bars and put her hands around them.
“What are you doing—” Dugland scoffed, “There’s stubborn and then there’s thick.”
He approached her slowly and clasped his hands over hers on the bars until the bobby, cursing under his breath, pushed Maggie into the cell. She knew she was risking her job but all she felt was relief not to be dragged away from him again.
Pushing back sobs, she spoke. “I am thick. Just a wet-nurse. I don’t tutor prodigies anymore. Do they call him a prodigy now that he’s grown up?”
“How would I know what became of a spoiled rich kid you couldn’t wait to forget? I’m a hired gun, remember.”
“Maybe you are the one who’s thick,” she said. “I remember everything about Dugland Dowd. I just don’t remember what he looked like. I programmed my Cog-Am to forget his face.”
The bobby shook his head as he closed the door of the cell.
“I bet you wish you could just erase it all except the lesson to never fall in love,” said Dugland. He turned away from her and went to the other side of the cell.
“You think that’s what I’d wish now?” She sat on a bench and folded her knees to her breasts. It was an action that used to be easier. “Well, I can tell you, back then I was out of wishing fairies, so I went to science. You of all people should understand that.”
“Oh, I understand all right,” he said, pacing in a small circle. “I understood it all when I deleted my forced Cog-Am. I understood that I had a plan with someone to overcome mind-rape, but instead, she ran and diddled with her own mind. I’ve understood for years now how she lied to me!”
“You want the truth? I was a fool!” She stood. “I learned something wasn’t right with the baby. I thought I could run to this ship to freeze time to save her. I understand that you’re angry but—but did you have to seduce me when I clearly thought you were a stranger?”
He bounded over to her. “Maggie, that wasn’t what I intended to do.”
Now she was the one who turned away.
“When we docked, two years had passed,” she said as she looked through the bars. “You were a twenty-year-old boy who was happy with a twenty-year-old right-sort-of-girl.”
The bobby tut-tutted from his too small desk.
“Is that what my mother told you? And you believed her?” asked Dugland.
“What did it matter what I believed? There was nothing I could do,” she said.
She would not cry in front of him even if she had to sound bitter. He’d never tolerated her crying.
“I suppose I can see why you’d want to forget,” he said, “but—”
“You aren’t listening. That’s not how I had my Cog-Am designed . . .” she said.
He angrily swiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. Maggie’s passion to explain herself suddenly disappeared. She sat on the hard bench again.
“Right. I’m sure you boiled everything down into particles you can’t see or touch so you can freeze it all up but still remember. At least it didn’t make you frigid.”
“’Ey chaser!” As the bobby bolted up from his desk, his white mustache also leapt. “If you were so smart, you’d understand how this ship works. You’ve had all this time to get over it all. For her it was just a short bit ago. It’s much harder on the likes of her.”
“Is it?” Dugland asked. “I’ve been without her twice as long. I’m the one still in love.”
“Dugger—” Maggie began. Her voice was so low and shaky that it was drowned out by the bobby’s bitter laugh.
“For the love of God, boy!” the bobby said. “She didn’t erase you. She’s dulled the pain, like I did with my Cog-Am after the war.”
“I said before, I only had the visual memory taken.” Maggie spoke softly.
Dugland bent down so they were eye to eye.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose I can understand that. Physicality and looks were never my strong suits back then. But I’ve gotten better. You see I’ve learned to fight.”
“That’s not true. You were perfect,” she said.
She made her eyes go blurry so his face was just a peach blur and a mass of black locks. She remembered a younger version of his lilting voice mocking her own haughtiness.
“Are you so stubborn that you’ll even argue about information you had erased from your brain?” he said.
But it was his humor that broke Maggie.
“But, I didn’t forget.” She sobbed into her hands. She felt him place his hands on the ball she had made of herself.
“I see you remember that if you cry I’ll do anything you want. I can forget how to fight, you know. I hear those Cog-Ams can erase things like that.”
“Oi!” the bobby said. “You’re the worst chaser I’ve ever seen. Most beg or propose.”
“I’ve already proposed. This is a private conversation between me and my fiancée. Don’t you have some drunken deeds to cover up? Bribes to take?” Dugland grumbled.
“Why? You offerin’?” the bobby asked.
***
Maggie opened her eyes.
“Told you it wouldn’t hurt,” Dugland said.
He was bending over her as she lay on the bed. He pulled the golden owl’s claws from the inside of her wrist’s Cog-Am slit. It felt like a thread of milk being pulled from her arm. The ship was slowing so the orange light in the Tru-Window was programmed to stay longer. Outside, she didn’t know if it was sunrise or sunset.
Maggie didn’t feel as dizzy as she expected. She touched Dug’s face and pushed back the dreadlocks he had acquired. His face looked so angular now. It made him look less trusting. Not that he was ever trusting, but his baby face had made him seem so. Now it was gone. She felt her eyes burn.
“You’re putting on pains just to be right,” he said, “I know it didn’t hurt.”
Now he looked like the sweet boy she remembered. He kissed like him, too. He just had sleeker, striped gray pants with the wild suspenders. She pulled away from his lips and it tugged at her more than milk or a memory thread.
“Of course it hurt,” she said. “All that lost time. You’ve caught up with me. You’re an old man now, Dugger.”
“You prefer me with my bad fashion choices and clumsy baby fat?”
Dugland lifted her easily, showing off. He sat down and cradled he
r in his lap.
Maggie smiled. “You were just a bit pudgy. Now it’s my turn.”
Her white dress showed sun shadows from the window.
“I want you pudgier. I’ll fill you with babies, lady.”
“So arrogant,” she said. “I’m not going to be one of those wives that sit all day. I plan to work directly with the FAMs now.”
“Those women who aren’t ready for their babies? Well, I guess if anyone can make them study up and get ready, it’s you,” he said. “We dock in an hour. The future is coming.”
“It’s not really the future. We’ve just traveled to the present so fast it slowed time,” she said in between kisses.
“Yeah, yeah. You know I was never good at quantum mechanics. If memory serves, I needed a tutor. Teach me again.”
Maggie decided the sun was definitely rising.
Alice
Morgen Knight
Looking up from where he lay, into leafless limbs, Rob suspected he was dreaming. The sky was blue, for one thing, and he could hear the sweet chirps of unseen birds. The naked sun was off somewhere to his left and a wave of pure white clouds were huddled together to the right. It was too perfect not to be a dream. This knowledge had to be kept secret from his broader self. Realizing you’re in a dream can bring the whole house of cards tumbling, and he wanted to hold on to this. You don’t get to see blue skies anymore. All the clouds are dark, skittering in a mad dash like the rabbit in that Lewis Carroll story. Late! Late! Late!
With her head on his right shoulder, Alice talked about how, when she was a little girl, she’d wanted to grow up and be a writer. A piece of poetry she’d written around the age of ten had gotten published and, from then on, it’d been her dream. She told him about how she’d walk around with paper and pen, writing down ideas or a small detail she felt was important. At some point, life got busy and the dream petered out, all her little story ideas packed up in the vault of her mind. “And they’re still there,” she said matter-of-factly. “Stacked up in neat rows, some of them running loose like sugared-up children, knocking into shit,” she giggled.
Rob smiled while his eyes traced the curve of a branch. It reminded him of a slender arm, the kind exposed by a formal dress, a bit toned. But he was listening to Alice—sweet, foul-mouthed little Alice. He owed that to her. It was something he’d seldom done when she was alive.