“You can’t do that!” I cried. “If the other humans find out about us, they might close the park! They’d take us all offline! We’d—”
We’d die.
The man shrugged. “It matters little to me. All I care about is my share. Roger’s been living high on the hog long enough. It’s time for my turn.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Surely you must understand that, Madeline? You know what it’s like to be a stepchild. To be… unwanted. I saw you tonight. You were the star. Everyone’s eyes were on you.” He glanced at Gilbert and smirked. “Everyone’s. Are you willing to give that up? To go back to the shadows?”
I felt a strange twisting inside me. How were this man’s words able to affect me so? It was true, I had enjoyed being center stage, but it was more than that. It was that, for once, people hadn’t seen me as an ugly, gawky villain. They’d thought that I was…
That I was beautiful.
“Madeline,” Gilbert said, and the feeling dispersed. I looked over at him. I knew what he was thinking.
There were people who thought I was beautiful. Who had all along. Gilbert, Anita, Mother. And Cinderella. I wasn’t unwanted at all. It didn’t matter what the fairy tale said about me. I wasn’t conscripted to that role anymore. Maybe the only one who’d believed that I ever was… was me.
“Give Cinderella back and I’ll talk to Mr. Tinker for you,” I said.
His stepbrother arched his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”
“Yes. It would be better for you in the long run, don’t you think?”
He considered me. “Maybe. But I’m not giving up my collateral. I’ll keep Cinderella, and you talk to Mr. Tinker, Madeline.”
“But being offline for a long time might hurt her!” I wasn’t sure this was true. I had no way of knowing. None of us had ever been shut down long-term. None of us had been removed from the park. None of us had ever defied Mr. Tinker’s orders.
Maybe her memory was backed up—maybe she’d be fine. But it was a risk, and the thought of losing my sister, possibly permanently, made my systems surge and slow, surge and slow. If Mr. Tinker were here, he would have known…
But he wasn’t. So I had to act on my own.
Mr. Tinker’s stepbrother laughed, turning and striding away, dragging Cindy alongside him, her body making horrible clanks and thumps as he moved. I looked around desperately for something I could stop him with. My eyes fell on the carpenters’ toolbox. A sledgehammer; no, if I threw it at him I might miss, might hit Cindy. A power drill, long orange extension cord still attached to it…
It would have to do.
In an instant, I’d ripped the extension cord from the toolbox and whirled toward Gilbert. He stared at me, his pupils spinning so fast, they blurred at the edges. “Madeline, what are you—?”
“Please, Gil,” I said. My voice sounded strange. Like I was on the brink of tears. Impossible tears.
He nodded, and I handed him the end of the cord. He raced over to the electrical box at the end of the street and plugged it in while I frantically pulled off my shoe. There—the connection between my foot and my shoe was shaped just like an electrical plug. I shoved my foot into the outlet on the extension cord and, without hesitation, raced into the gravel parking lot.
At the sound of my approach, Mr. Tinker’s stepbrother turned, making a squeak of alarm. He tried to run, but Cinderella’s dead weight slowed him. He couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. I careened toward him, preparing to tackle him—
And the length of the cord ran out.
I tripped, falling face-first onto the gravel. The impact tore at the silicon on my face and hands, exposing the metal underneath. I scrambled up on my knees, yanking at the cord, desperate for it to give me just a little more length, but it was stretched to its maximum.
The stepbrother, just a few feet away from me, smirked. He turned to leave me there, prone and helpless.
The moonlight, seeping between the branches of the trees, fell on Cinderella’s blank face.
I lunged forward again. The extension cord snapped. Sparks flew from its frayed ends as the bare wires ripped apart, sending a final surge of electricity through my body. A hideous sound reverberated through my audio receptors. It sounded like a scream.
The last thing I felt before it all went black was the force of my body colliding with another.
♛
System boot in progress. Ninety-seven percent completed. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. System online.
Click. Whir. My pupils were rotating, slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. Gradually, the room came to focus in front of me. I was in a seated position in a room with two beds. There were five other subjects in the room. One organic, four mechanical.
“She’s coming around,” a man’s voice said with a gentle American Midwestern lilt. This was the organic subject. I focused on him sitting across from me, perched at the foot of the other bed. Graying ginger hair, quaintly anachronistic horned-rim glasses framing sprightly blue eyes.
I recognized him.
“Mr. Tinker?” I said. For the way I felt, I would have expected my voice to sound weak and shaky, but it came out the same as it always did, even and normal-pitched. Reminding me that an animatron shouldn’t have been feeling at all.
But I was.
“Maddie! You’re back online!” a girl’s voice squealed. Despite the timbre in it, I recognized it as a synthetic voice, a mechanical. One better at projecting emotion than I was. Arms flew around me. I focused again and felt a jolt run through me.
“Cindy! You’re all right?”
She grinned and nodded. “Mr. Tinker was able to get me back online before you. You had more significant damage than I did.” Her face grew serious. “You saved everyone, Maddie. Not just me. The whole park. I… I’m sorry. I endangered everyone. You were right—”
I shook my head, cutting her off. Maybe I’d been right about Mr. Tinker’s stepbrother, but I hadn’t been right about everything else. If I’d listened to Cindy sooner instead of arguing with her, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. I glanced down at my hands, remembering the way they’d been torn apart when I’d fallen. Smooth silicon patches covered the whole, slightly lighter than the rest of me, like strange scars. Numbly, I said, “You left the park… We both did… But we’re all right…?”
Mr. Tinker made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Maddie, when I told you all not to leave the park, I didn’t mean the leaving itself would be what harmed you. It was the people outside the park I was worried about. People like my brother. Jonas.”
“Your stepbrother,” I clarified.
He rolled his eyes. “When your parents get married when you’re three, you’re brothers. I just didn’t realize Jonas didn’t feel the same way.”
For just an instant, I thought I felt Cindy’s arms around me shudder. I glanced over at her. She looked so sad—so much sadder than I’d ever seen her pretend to be in the attraction, even when she was weeping about not going to the ball. Real sorrow, not playacting. She had loved Jonas. And it had all been a lie.
I took her hand in mine and squeezed it.
“What’s going to happen to Jonas?” I asked.
Mr. Tinker rolled his eyes again. “We’ll work it out,” he said. “I love my brother, but there’s a reason I didn’t tell him about you all to begin with. I know him. I’m going to have to work on the park’s security, though. Never saw a reason for it before. Too trusting, I guess.”
“But that can’t just be the end of it,” I protested. “He knows about us. He said he was going to go to the media about us. What about that?”
“Yes, that.” Mr. Tinker rubbed the back of his neck, looking down. “I’m afraid things are going to have to change around here. Because you’re right—we’re not going to be able to keep this a secret anymore.”
My pupils clicked and whirred. “You’re going to let the humans know about us?” I finally managed.
He nodded. “And more than that, Maddie. After what happened to you an
d Cindy, I realized… I can’t just keep you here like my private zoo animals. You’re people. You can’t be held prisoner.”
“What? But how—”
Mother stepped forward then. I looked up at her, consciously realizing for the first time that Cindy, Mr. Tinker, and I weren’t alone in the room. Anita stood, smiling, behind Mother, and to her left…
To her left was Gilbert. He was watching me hesitantly. I met his eyes for a long moment until Mother cleared her throat.
“Look at your feet, Madeline,” she said.
I looked down and started. The shoes I was wearing were similar to my old ones, but these didn’t just glow where the soles touched the ground. The whole shoe lit up, a bright blue, making my feet and ankles shine with silicon reflection.
“Portable energy packs. Just keep an eye on the color. If it turns red, you need to either plug in to a wired power source or change to a different pair of shoes,” Mr. Tinker explained.
“You mean… we can leave?”
He nodded. “It’s up to you. You’re welcome to stay here or to go. You can come and go as you please.”
I felt overwhelmed, my processors surging again.
Mr. Tinker laughed. “You can think it over, take time to digest it. Nothing’s happening just yet. It will soon, but when it does… We’ll get through it together.” He glanced over at Gilbert pointedly, a silent exchange seeming to pass between them. Then Mr. Tinker patted my knee. “I’ll give you some time to process this.”
He stood up. Cindy squeezed my hand again, and she, Mother, and Anita followed Mr. Tinker out of the room. Only Gilbert lingered. Before she closed the door, I could have sworn Cindy winked at me, but the movement was quick and then the door was between us.
Gilbert came over to sit beside me at the foot of the bed. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Automatically, I moved to protest, to remind him that I didn’t actually feel anything… but you know what? I didn’t feel like it. Not anymore.
“Okay, I guess. Everything seems to be functioning as normal.”
He smiled. “I’m glad. It was touch-and-go there. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to repair you. The falls damaged your skin, and the electrical currents had done a number on your circuitry. Mr. Tinker wasn’t sure he’d be able to repair your original body at all. He thought about transferring your memory into a new body, but, well…” He looked at me, his grin crooked. “We all thought that might not be the same.”
I looked down at my hands, wondering what it would have been like to wake up in a new body. Would it have felt strange? Would my new body have been like this one, still quick to freeze up whenever I was overwhelmed, still clumsy and awkward? Would I have still been me?
“I’m glad it didn’t come to that,” I said quietly.
“Me too,” Gilbert said. I got the distinct impression that if he were human, he’d be blushing now. “Madeline, I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time. And when I saw you fall in the parking lot, I was sure I’d lost my chance. But you’re still here. So I want to tell you now. But first—that is—” I quirked my head at him, and he said in a rush, “Would you mind awfully if I kissed you?”
Click. Whir. Everything in my mind slowed to a crawl. “I wouldn’t mind at all,” I whispered.
Gilbert leaned over and kissed me.
And I knew it then: what Cinderella had been talking about all this time. Why she’d fought with me so vehemently. Why she’d put so much faith in Jonas, been willing to risk so much for him despite not knowing who he truly was. All for this one simple feeling.
I felt alive.
About the Author
Lyssa Chiavari is an author of speculative fiction for young adults, including Fourth World, the first book in a sci-fi trilogy set on Mars, and Cheerleaders From Planet X, a tongue-in-cheek send-up of all things sci-fi. Her short fiction has appeared in Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology, Brave New Girls: Tales of Heroines Who Hack, and Perchance to Dream: Classic Tales from the Bard’s World in New Skins. Her first published story, “The Choice,” was named one of Ama-gi Magazine’s Best Fiction of 2014. Lyssa lives with her family and way too many animals in the woods of Northwest Oregon. You can visit her online at lyssachiavari.com.
Books by Lyssa Chiavari:
Fourth World (The Iamos Trilogy, Book 1)
Different Worlds: A Novella (The Iamos Trilogy, Book 1.5)
New World (The Iamos Trilogy, Book 2)
One World (The Iamos Trilogy, Book 3) (Coming soon!)
Cheerleaders From Planet X
Short Stories by Lyssa Chiavari:
Gale: A Sci-fi Retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Seven Years Among Dragons: A Solarpunk Fairy Tale
Love short stories? Support Lyssa on Patreon to read never-before-published short stories, including stories set in the Iamos universe!
Tresses & Erubescence
a retelling of Rapunzel
♛
AMY MCNULTY
When she’d promised me immortality, I hadn’t pictured the weeks beforehand passing the time sewing for victory and listening to radio programs.
Minnie chuckled at something the man on the radio had said, the needle in her hand stretched upward as far as the length of the thread allowed.
The smile fell off her ruby-red lips as she looked down at me. Curled up on a rug at her feet, I sat uneasily before the copper electric space heater. My parents hadn’t been able to afford such a thing. I stared at it, wondering how easily something brushing against it might catch fire. I shifted my long, long dark blonde braid around my other shoulder so it wasn’t uncomfortably close to the red-hot coils.
“Zelda, you’re daydreaming again,” she said. “Don’t you care about the boys on the front lines? Sew, dear, sew. The Red Cross can’t get quilts for the relief effort fast enough.” I didn’t point out how difficult it was to sew in such little light. I had the bright red coils, but she liked the dim light of a single gas lantern. With the sun set, there wasn’t even a sliver of light pouring in through the tiniest of cracks in the attic’s single boarded-up window.
The audience listening to the comic all those hundreds of miles away laughed and a trombone made a droopy sound. Jolting back into the moment, I continued my cross stitch on the quilt patch on my lap. If the radio and Minnie were to be believed, women and girls all across the country were doing their parts to help with the war effort. There were the nurses overseas, and some women were getting jobs in factories, driving streetcars, or working as mechanics—we even had an All-American Girls Baseball League. The world somehow seemed both more frightening than ever and more exhilarating. Evil like little else that had ever existed was out there, invading nations, threatening freedom. There were whispers of unspeakable horrors I couldn’t even imagine, things Minnie tried to tell me the radio wasn’t talking about. Yet even as the Second World War had spread like an infection over Europe, people like my parents had put their noses to the grindstone and lamented that they hoped it ended fast—and they’d hoped our country would stay out of it.
Now there was no chance of that. The Survival War, as President Roosevelt called it, hung over everything—every newspaper ad, every radio broadcast, every presidential address. But here, that all seemed so removed. Ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor, it had been relatively safe on our shores. But it was more than that. Here, I was too removed from the war effort. I wasn’t in the factory. I wasn’t playing ball.
I was here, in this attic, the radio and Minnie too often my only company as of late.
Minnie hummed along with the song that came on at the end of the comedian’s show. “The girls downstairs send their best,” she said, hardly pausing in her tune. “As do the young gentlemen. They miss you and hope you’ll be joining them soon.”
I swallowed. Joining them… I did miss the company, but joining them was so… final. There was a reason why I was the last to turn. The last to accept it.
O
nly now, there was no one else left but me for them to quench their thirst with, and this house had oh-so-many hungry mouths to feed.
Fibber McGee and Molly started up and Minnie wrinkled her nose at the sound of Jim Jordan’s voice, standing to turn the radio dial off. “That drivel.” Her bright blue eyes sparkled even in the near-darkness of the attic as she turned to me. “I suppose that’s enough for today.” She stared down at my lap. “That’s a… Well, that’s an interesting design.”
I’d embroidered a set of raindrops, only instead of blue thread, I’d grabbed red. I held the square up to what little light we had. Blood. Not the best choice for a wartime blanket.
Still, it was edged and it would suffice. I finished off the pattern and grabbed for the scissors in the sewing kit, cutting off the rest of the thread.
Minnie took it from me, putting it atop hers over her arm, and left me with a stack of raw material. “This will give you something to do,” she said. “We’ll send breakfast in the morning.” She grabbed the tray on which she’d brought me steak and pudding. Despite the rations, she was able to spare most of her luxuries for me since I was the only one here who really needed it.
Back home, I never would have dreamed I’d one day be eating steak.
I cut a new piece of thread—I was pretty sure it was blue this time—and placed the small scissors into the shirt pocket over my breast.
Before leaving, she stepped closer and jostled the tray in her hand so she could pinch my cheek. “You’re such a good girl,” she said. She looked as if she were in her twenties—hardly old enough to mother my sixteen-year-old self—but I knew that in her case, appearances were deceiving.
“Rest up,” she said, heading for the door. As her hand touched the knob, she hesitated, her back even straighter than usual, her head slightly tilted upward, as if sensing something. “And be careful around the door. Mary Ellen is… struggling with the adjustment. I don’t want her quenching on you unsupervised.”
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