by Cat Rambo
I've tried to picture it ever since, you strolling into a city anybody with any sense had long since fled. You whistled, I'm sure you whistled. But then what? Did you crawl into the city's bed and stroke its shoulder, nibbling on its ear and whispering tidings of morning, the way you would for me? Did you wrap your arms around it and speak of love and sex and waffles, coaxing it past the foggy stages of fresh wakening and into the warmth of your voice? Did you even think of me as you made love to the city, mother, midwife and lover all in one? I picture it, but I don't want to know.
Whatever you did, it wasn't enough. Or it was too much. New Orleans woke in the middle of the worst cyclonic storm on the Atlantic since they've kept records. It trembled and shook, as if convulsed with shrieks of, "Not again!" and threw itself into the ocean, taking you and every other poor soul trapped there with it. Katrina II, Hurricane's Revenge.
The waking must be contagious. It traveled up the Gulf Stream to New York, then through the Great Lakes to Chicago. They're waking themselves and you're dead and gone, drowned in a pile of rubble. I'll never have to look at you and know you dream of sapient Metropolis even as you kiss my fingers. You're lost and gone and I'm rid of you and your mania at last.
I remember the night we first talked of cities. We wandered down State street, lightly buzzed and falling into each other's arms at the slightest provocation. You spread your arms to the sky, as if embracing it and the towers around us. "Can't you feel it breathing?" you asked me. I felt humid air and the stillness of closed shops and closing restaurants. "We could nudge it, just a little. Then there'd be something marvelous."
We kissed. I pressed my lips to yours, helpless to answer you another way. The train rumbled overhead as we parted. You sighed and I heard the street sigh with you.
Los Angeles never woke up. You said it wouldn't, that it was a stinking mass of ghettoed neighborhoods and highway united by a central strip devoted to tourists and hookers. You said there wasn't enough human soul there to keep the people from turning to plastic. You called it an abomination, a collection of suburbs with no city. San Diego, San Francisco, they creaked into life, but Los Angeles remained still.
You were right, but it's the only city with suburbs left. All the wakeful cities went to war today. They ate the half-towns surrounding them, swallowed them into the earth, trampled them underfoot, and consumed their remains. Millions of people are dead. Half of Maryland and portions of Virginia aren't there anymore. All the gray places that cannibalized the cities are gone.
I wish you'd been here to see it.
I work on a farm now. They've sprung up where the suburbs used to be. The cities are riddled with markets selling fresh produce. Visiting the markets is the newest pastime for the people living in cities.
The farmers are experimenting, making new things out of the soil. They've made a plant that tastes like chocolate grow in the Midwest. It's creamy and sweet so you can eat the fruit straight. It tastes slightly nutty as it dissolves in your mouth. A used car dealer from Troy Michigan developed it. Horticulture had always been his hobby, and it became his life after Detroit leveled his home and killed his family. He lost everything, but the cities are full of chocolate.
I don't think of you when I eat it, because I don't think of you at all anymore. I just go to the private bars with low lights out of habit. The world has changed and there's no room left for missing you.
Los Angeles is gone. San Diego and San Francisco marched against it. They say the whole coast trembled under the strain of the two cities treading steadily toward their victim. Los Angeles was still asleep and they tore it to shreds.
It's not the only one. All of the sleeping cities are under siege. Milwaukee and Chicago devoured Green Bay, leaving a pile of rubble surrounded by lakes. But you know that.
I've spent the last year working a farm in Wisconsin. Chicago turned back south and as it passed by I ran to the roof, telescope in hand. I don't know what made me think of it, but I needed to see this divided city holding itself together with nothing more than wrath and disdain for the unconscious heaps of buildings nearby. I leaned out of the window, almost nautical as I scanned the skyline. You were right; they're glorious when they're awake and moving with purpose. And there you are, perched on the spire of the Sears Tower, hair streaming in the wind and laughing with joy.
The telescope falls from my hand. I'm running, feet slapping hard against the ground as I rush to catch up with the city, to join the march. I understand now, and I need to see it, to be part of it. Wait for me, just a moment longer. I'm coming to you.
© 2011 by Anaea Lay
First published in APEX Magazine, edited by Catherynne Valente, 2011.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
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Anaea Lay lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she sells Real Estate under a different name, writes, cooks, plays board games, spoils her cat, runs the Strange Horizons podcast, and plots to take over the world. Her work has appeared in a variety of venues including Apex, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Shock Totem, and Penumbra.
Seaside Sirens, 1848
Anna Zumbro
"Let's race to the shore," William challenged.
"I'm not interested," Arthur said. He watched his twin's shoulders droop and his gait slacken, then he took off toward the water. Deceit was always his surest path to victory.
"That was a dirty trick," William protested as he caught up to his brother.
Arthur ignored him. His attention had moved on to the row of wooden carriages lining the water's edge on the ladies' beach a quarter mile away. Women in long dresses entered the bathing machines, which teams of horses then drew into the surf. The boys could hear the delighted shrieks of women exiting the carriages on the far side and splashing into the water. Arthur had seen the bathing machines every year on holiday in Kent, but now, at twelve, he took notice of them.
William nudged Arthur and pointed to the tiny figure of a bather diving under the surface head first, her bare legs waving immodestly in the sunlight.
"Didn't Miss Violet and her companion say they were going to have a bathe today?" William asked, thinking of the pretty young woman staying at their hotel.
Arthur responded with a devilish grin. "Suppose we do too, then. Suppose we swim in that direction…" William was already stripping off his trousers.
The boys waded into the blue water until the bottom dropped off and they could move freely. Keeping their heads low, they approached the sound of feminine voices with the stealth of soldiers scouting an enemy camp.
From inside the nearest carriage, a woman's lyrical voice pleaded, "Do join me in the water, Mrs. Collins. It will do you a world of good."
"That's Miss Violet!" William hissed. Arthur shushed him and pulled him next to the carriage wheels.
The door opened. The water rippled as the lone bather entered the sea.
"It's her all right," Arthur whispered. "That's her hair peeking out of the cap."
William ducked his head under, braving the irritation of saltwater on his eyes for a glimpse of Miss Violet in her short bathing dress. What he saw was far different than his fantasies. He gasped and took in a gulp of the sea as he surfaced.
"Arthur! She's a— Arthur?"
William spun around in search of his brother. He did not see the tentacle snaking around his neck until it was too late.
"How was your bathe, Miss Violet?"
"It was invigorating, Mrs. Collins, although I'm afraid those young lads from the hotel caught sight of me and I had to eat them. I felt just dreadful about it and now I've no appetite for dinner. Still, I couldn't very well have let them tell others, could I?"
"Quite so! A nasty trick, sneaking over to the ladies' beach. I should say it serves them right."
© 2014 by Anna Zumbro
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Anna Zumbro writes short speculative and literary fiction. She has worked as a newspaper copy editor, Peace Corps volunteer, and teacher. Her work has
appeared at Plasma Frequency, Kazka Press, SpeckLit, and other publications.
#Dragonspit
William Meikle
Dragon spit went global just after midnight on the 23rd January 2016. It wasn't intentional. Tam Duncan was playing about on Twitter when he came across a photograph of a cute cat and a Game of Thrones character. He'd had a few beers, and he posted what he was thinking.
@tamd See that #GRRM - I bet he drinks #dragonspit
The response was immediate. He had ten Twitter replies and five Direct Messages in as many seconds.
@thehoundsgirl #GRRM Please, what is #dragonspit?
Tam was feeling playful.
@tamd @thehoundsgirl #dragonspit - a pool of spit big enough to drown #GRRM in
Just minutes later, Tam's Twitterfeed exploded with abuse; his mailbox filled up with threats of castration and death and his telephone started to ring—constantly. Luckily the cyber attack didn't last long, as his PC was hacked a minute after that, a particularly nasty Trojan virus settling in for a long stay that would keep Tam offline for days.
But the damage was done. A new user appeared just as Tam went dark.
@enterthedragon @tamd was right. #GRRM needs drowning in #dragonspit
The backlash started immediately from the Twittersphere and beyond as Twitterers and fans responded to the perceived slur on their idol. But the @enterthedragon user proved ready for it.
@enterthedragon Bring it on, kids. The #dragonspit apocalypse is coming. Prepare to drown.
The newcomer proved resilient against all attacks. Both the #GRRM and #dragonspit hashtags trended worldwide, and @enterthedragon went from zero to ten thousand followers in the first hour. As if emboldened, the first picture of a pool of smoking spit with someone drowning in it was posted at 1.00am. It was also cross-posted to Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.
@enterthedragon Here's a wee photie of #dragonspit for you. #GRRM
@enterthedragon's follower count stood at thirty five thousand by the time the first video went up on Youtube.
@enterthedragon Check it out/ http://tiny.pr.1847ly. #dragonspit
The video showed a youth staggering in the street, spitting in small neat puddles in the gutter, all perfectly orchestrated to a hard dance beat. The puddles smoked. The first copycat video arrived from a Newcastle club less than an hour later. Massed ranks stood, line-dancing style, pretending, or not as the case might be, to spit and dance at the same time.
It went round the world in a blink. By the next morning there were a hundred new videos from pubs and clubs. The general public caught on when it featured on CNN.
@enterthedragon hit a million followers on Twitter faster than anyone in the history of the site and the video shot past ten million views on Youtube showing no signs of slowing.
@enterthedragon Not long now until #dragonspit apocalypse
What with the abuse from fans of the show's celebrities who were being mocked, and new fans of the dance craze that was sweeping everything before it, @ enterthedragon became a worldwide celebrity, in name at least. But no one, even the most ardent of hackers, could track down the owner of the account.
@enterthedragon They seek it here, they seek it there, they seek that #dragonspit everywhere.
@enterthedragon's photographs of cats drinking smoking spit took over Facebook for a week. More videos of the dance craze turned up on Youtube and were eagerly lapped up by an ever-more obsessed population.
The real impact started to be felt soon after that.
@enterthedragon Here it comes. #dragonspit apocalypse
At first the puddles were ascribed to a practical joke. Some news sources hinted that the appearance of smoking spit at so many sites across the planet was proof that the whole enterthedragon phenomenon was a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt that had gone even more viral than the wildest dreams of whoever had thought it up. They cited the fact that the spit being discovered was of a singularly uniform color, being almost jet black.
Even while speculation was piled upon speculation, the dance clips on Youtube passed a hundred million views and @enterthedragon got his two millionth follower on Twitter.
More pools of spit were being found worldwide. No one saw how they were formed; they appeared overnight, in remote places at first, and small, but as time passed, so the puddles grew every larger and deeper, The smoke rose in a noxious fume worse than the worst pollution.
London woke one morning to find a smoking, jet-black Thames flowing past Parliament.
@enterthedragon Oh my God. It's full of #dragonspit
A video of a dam bursting in Nepal and unleashing a wave of smoking spit half a mile wide onto an unsuspecting village went viral as soon as it was posted. Later, no one was able to vouch for its authenticity, but that scarcely mattered. All of the attention pushed @enterthedragon to the very top of the list of Twitter and YouTube celebrities.
@enterthedragon I'm on top of the world, Ma. ROFLMAO #dragonspit
Almost everyone online was now connected to @enterthedragon either through a social media channel or by having been sent a link or email from someone else. And that's when it happened. The oceans and lakes of the planet turned black, the rivers ran with spit, and the rain fell—smoking, dark and bitter. The great Dragon emerged from behind his social media identity.
@enterthedragon. Heeeere's Johnny! #dragonspit
@enterthedragon. I'd like to teach the world to spit. #dragonspit
The first sighting was in Paris. The city, the old tower and the new financial centers burned to crispy ash in seconds as the Dragon's shadow passed over, leaving only smoking spit behind.
@enterthedragon Look on my works ye mighty and despair!
@enterthedragon Who's next?
© 2014 by William Meikle
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William Meikle is a Scottish writer now living in Canada, with twenty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, DarkFuse and Dark Renaissance, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with recent sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Buzzy Mag among others. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he’s not writing he dreams of fortune and glory.
Interview with Author and Editor Cat Rambo
Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov's, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain," from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see http://www.kittywumpus.net.
Q & A
Iulian: Cat, I can trace your earliest writings to the beginning of the 90's. Since then you had a prolific career as a writer and as an editor. Tell us a bit about the time before all that came to be; how did you start, what pushed you toward writing and when did you know you were ready?
Cat: It was always assumed I'd be a writer for two reasons: a) I loved, loved, loved to read and b) my grandmother wrote YA fiction. I knew I was ready when I realized if I didn't get on the ball I'd be one of those people always wistfully thinking "I could be a writer."
Give us a bit about non-writer Cat Rambo. How and where did you grow up, what were your influences and what were some of the jobs you had before going full-time writer? Since writing, have you ever considered any other career?
I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, where my dad taught at Notre Dame. If there was any one influence I'd point to, it would be the Griffon Bookstore there, where I played countless hours of D&D and other role-playing games. I worked there all through high school as well. In college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but considered economics, computer science, and veterinary medicine. Later jobs incl
uded working as a network security expert, a technical writer, and lots and lots of teaching.
You graduated from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminar, and Clarion West. How important were these to you, how did they help you, and would you recommend beginning writers to invest their time and money in such an event?
JHU gave me a number of things, including time and space to write, as well as a chance to work with John Barth, who's been a big influence on my writing. Clarion West gave me tools for writing, and talked about the mechanics of writing in a way JHU never did. As far as their worth to beginning writers—the best investment you can make is giving yourself that time and space to write, and there's a lot of ways you can do it. F&SF workshops, though, also often provide networking opportunities as well as an entrance into the F&SF world for the uninitiated who haven't grown up going to cons.