by Apex Authors
At a convention, sleep is kind of secondary anyway.
You just don't usually start out that way.
We left for Kentucky on Wednesday night. Things were being thrown into the car right up to the moment we pulled out of the driveway: suitcase, CDs, iPod, laptop, fancy dress, fancy shoes, curlers, case of water, suitcase, powerbars, books ... including my limited hardcover Aegri Somnia, the mass signature sheet of which our Stoker-nominated editor had somehow neglected to sign.
I always like a trip better once I'm on the road, because at that point there's no sense worrying about what you've forgotten. You really do—and should—leave all your cares behind. And if you happen to leave your razor with them, they do have drugstores in Toronto (hallelujah).
We made it to Jason's house that night in time to settle in, make up the pull-out couchbed, have dinner, and crash. In that order. The next morning, we tried to hit the road early. We unloaded the contents of the Volvo into Jason's SUV (we left the baby car seat in place, since we had more than enough room and Jason swore it would be a bear to take it out and put it back in again). Jason crammed in the rest of his maps and gear, while I entertained myself with getting the owner of the car seat, Jason's two-year-old daughter Lindsey, all riled up.
First, let me say that Lindsey is reeeeeeally not a morning person. I used to think my mother was the worst specimen to come across at daybreak, but Lindsey takes the cake. She was sitting in the living room when I came upon her, her high chair parked in front of Dora the Explorer. Her hair was half plastered to her face, and half straight up a foot in the air. She stared at the television like a zombie, unresponsive to either the calling of her name or the presence of food put before her. I half expected Jason to walk up with a sippy cup full of Bloody Mary and say, “Here, sweetie. Hair of the dog."
Of course, no child—morning person or not—can withstand the awesome power of Fairy Godmother Lee. Lindsey was no exception. Within half an hour, we were chasing each other around the kitchen and giggling like maniacs.
All in all, it was a lovely way to start the day. Mad game of tag, followed by Starbucks. I really must do that more often.
Here comes the uneventful bit, so I'll William Goldman it for you: What with one thing or another, nine hours passed.
Jason and I took turns driving in stints and we were at the border well before expected ... and I was at the wheel.
Which meant everything was going to go wrong.
The first thing that went wrong was that I was muscled into the Humongous Trucks Only lane. Luckily, they don't hold that against you, and they'll begrudgingly take your toll money anyway. (In that SUV, they probably just thought I was trying to compensate for something.) Next came the bridge—the bridge with VERY narrow lanes. Not that I was concerned about falling off the bridge at all, since I was surrounded on all sides by Very Fast-Moving Humongous Trucks. Hoorah.
And then we were at the border. I pulled right up to the window with no waiting, and handed the grim young man our passports.
Grim Young Man: Where are you from?
Lee: Murfreesboro, Tennessee. (Why can't I say that without a southern accent?)
GYM: What are you bringing?
Lee: Clothes ... and books.
GYM: Where are you going?
Lee: World Horror Convention in Toronto.
GYM: What kind of convention is it?
Lee: It's a literary convention.
GYM: Who are you bringing?
Who am I bringing? Really? Wasn't he holding their credentials? I looked at Steve and Jason, then looked back at the Grim Young Man skeptically. The first answer that sprang to mind was “My pimp and my John.” Fortunately for us all, I have learned the ability to think before I speak. Sometimes.
Lee: Um ... my two friends.
GYM: Then what's all that stuff in the back?
Lee: Clothes and books. (Was he nuts?) We're going to be there for a few days.
GYM: Then why didn't you say that when I asked you what you were bringing?
Lee: I thought you asked me WHO I was bringing.
And he had, too. I know, because the editor in me wanted to correct him and say “whom” the first time he asked the question. But I thought before that outburst too (clever me). Honestly, he could think I was as stupid as he wanted as long as he let us pass.
Finally, he reluctantly handed me back the passports and waved me on. And I drove ahead ... kind of.
What is it with Canada? Do they think we know instinctively where to go? Like geese or something? There were NO markings on the road. Most of the cars seemed to be going in a left-erly direction, so I steered that way. I gently approached the exit, hoping that at some point there would be official designated markings that prevented cars from just bashing into each other willy nilly. Happily, there were. But I didn't have to deal with them for long.
I pulled into the nearest fast-food parking lot, nerves still jangling, and handed Jason the keys.
A few things to note about Canada: paying with American cash gets you a horrible exchange rate, your cell phone will work but it will be bloody expensive, and Europeans have a hell of a time getting cash out of the ATMs. Steve discovered this last one at a dingy little gas station boasting not much more than petrol, toilets, and Mars bars. He later commiserated over the fact with Michael Marshall Smith, who had apparently found himself in the same predicament.
Jason got us to the con's overflow hotel, and checked in. We unloaded the car in bits and pieces, went up the elevator, and opened the door to our rat cage.
Oh, the hotel was fine enough. The room was just the SIZE of a rat cage. Inside the room were two twin beds. I looked at Steve and Jason again in turn, and did the calculations. I mentally cursed myself for yet again having gone against instinct and not grabbed my Aero Bed on the way out the door. I kept cursing myself, loudly enough to drown out most of Steve's fascinating lecture on the definition of a standard European “double” room. I stopped just in time to hear his suggestion that we just tough it out and “get romantic.” I could not, however, stop myself from laughing at the idea.
Jason asked after another room—which of course there were none—and as a last-ditch effort the hotel staff offered us a rollaway bed. For a small (aka: exorbitant) fee, of course.
I sighed, and offered to pay for the bed. Steve may have been a little dismayed and not a little surprised at my final judgment under pressure, but I've been to enough conventions. I've learned my lessons, and your lessons, and then some.
Sleep may indeed be secondary, but it's still second.
The rollaway bed wasn't so bad. I had brought my own pillow along for the car ride, so that was a bonus. The mattress on the rollaway was much softer than the beds in the room, and perhaps even a tiny bit bigger. In fact, it was just a tiny bit bigger than there was space in the room. We shoved one twin bed up against the wall and the other up against the air conditioning unit, and all three of us still had to lift and shove and squeeze to get the whole rollaway in enough to lay flat. But we finally did it. We stood back and admired our handiwork...
...and realized that our room now consisted of a small entranceway, a bathroom, and one slightly wonky Great Big Huge Bed.
It was every twelve-year-old's dream.
On the way to the convention hotel, we wondered casually which friends we might run into first.
We made it three feet—and I'm not kidding when I say THREE FEET, count ‘em, thirty-six inches—when we were embraced by the very vivacious Robert J. Sawyer and whisked off to the bar.
The convention had officially begun.
* * * *
And Back Again
What with one thing or another, three days passed.
By now you've read the WHC Con reports and seen the pictures in Locus (Michael Laimo still owes me five bucks), so I won't bore you with more details. Suffice it to say that many friends were met—new and old—many books were enthusiastically defaced, many deals were witnessed, and many MANY alcoh
olic beverages were consumed. I didn't get any rest ... and Jason got food poisoning.
But like a certain the chart-topping Torontonian rock band reminds us, the point of the journey is not to arrive.
Steve was a champion. On Sunday he marched the poisoned Jason past the angry bus driver and poured us into the car. I curled up into a ball on the backseat, and Jason drove around the same block three times before finally finding his way out of the city. Steve turned the music up, played DJ, and chattered constantly to keep whoever was at the wheel alert and awake. Jason looked progressively worse and worse; Steve took the keys from him as soon as we stopped for lunch and handed them to me. No one argued.
No one bothered to check the gas gauge either.
The “almost empty” warning light never worked in the first Saturn I owned, but it was never an issue. I drove to school and drove to work and filled up like clockwork every week (back when $10 got me change back from a full tank). Happily, the little orange icon in my Volvo is in proper working order. It's saved my carcass more than a few times on the way to and from work.
But the way to and from work in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is fifteen miles long, with three exits between origin and destination. Conversely, the way to the US from Toronto is a wasteland.
When I noticed the warning light in the SUV, I started praying.
It's pretty bad when I resort to praying—and I am not selective in my deity. I go through God, Buddha, Allah, Kali, Ganesha and any other Hindu god I can remember, Mother Mary, Mother Earth, The Unnamed Ones, The Machines of the Universe, and my own personal guardian angel, Murphy.
Not that praying to Murphy ever gets me anywhere—he's usually the one laughing his ass off at whatever predicament I've gotten myself into this time. But I digress.
Prayers led me to Exit 17. I followed the little blue sign with the tinier white arrow to the left and drove. And drove. And drove.
We finally found ourselves at a four-way stop, at the center of a conglomeration that had given up on the wish to be a town when it grew up. Staring back at us was a dusty one-pump service station with a giant LEASE sign in the window.
Of course I'm not kidding. This is all part of the adventure, you see. The heart pounding, the gut-wrenching fear ... this is all part of the adventure.
Since the female was driving, I sidled up to the first pedestrian I spotted and rolled down the window. When I asked after a gas station, I was informed there was none. When I conveyed my sheer desperation, he asked where we were headed. “Home,” said Steve. “Kentucky,” I said at the same time.
"The States,” our Samaritan translated sagely. He gave us directions that led us far down one road, turning right, and going farther down another. Farther into the wasteland. My gut clenched.
Jason tried to be sympathetic and hopeful all at the same time. “What's the worst that could happen?” he asked. “If we run out of gas, we walk to the gas station and get some more. Don't worry. It's okay."
On one level, I knew what he said made perfect rational sense. But had he just been to the same convention I had?
Every horror fan on the planet recognizes those famous last words.
How long had that gas station been closed? Did the Department of Canadian Wasteland Transportation know about this ... or care? What if that little blue sign was just a lure for desperate travelers, the locals of the “town” forced by some ancient demonic geas to direct said travelers into the depths of said wasteland from whence they never returned...
...and there it was. I was so elated that I filled the car up while the men relieved themselves, and I sprang for the full tank. That dingy little gas station had rescued me from my terrible imagination. That dingy little gas station was my salvation, my oasis in the desert. That dingy little gas station ... was the same dingy little gas station we had stopped at on the way up.
You have to appreciate the irony.
According to Jason, there was graffiti in one stall proclaiming that “This Place Sucks."
Considering ourselves recent experts on the area, we had to agree.
Our last hurdle was the US border. Here was where we would find out if they would let Jason back into the country, and if they would scold Steve for having left it in the first place. We were given plenty of time to contemplate this and countless other scenarios because, unlike Canada, the wait in line for the US border was over an hour.
We watched car after car was searched. We watched as a woman in line who got out of her car was yelled at and approached by tetchy armed officials as if she might explode at any moment. We made up stories about how the furriners in the sedan ahead of us were the refugees responsible for defacing our dingy gas station. We postulated a slew of questions the border patrol could possibly ask us, and what our serious—and not-so-serious—answers would be. Offhand, I added, “What if they ask us about the empty baby seat?"
There was a pause; it was obviously something the men hadn't considered.
I put my hands on my cheeks and, suppressing a wave of giggles, screamed: “Oh my GAWD, we forgot the BABY!!!"
Our proud author was the talkative one at the border; I think our publisher was doing his best not to throw up. For some reason the guard's interest was in neither of them, but in ME. (I was as surprised as you.) Author and publisher he got; he wanted to know how I fit into the equation. That quip from before rose up in my throat and I swallowed it down, mechanically spouting a succinct description of my job at Ingram that apparently sufficed. He waved us through.
And that was it.
Well, that was it apart from the rest of the grueling hours home. I don't remember a whole lot more than the road, the thunderstorms, and black raspberry ice cream in the Ohio town I will forever remember as “Wikipedia” (thank you, Steve).
Okay, I DO remember more than that, but I won't bore you with the details. After all, if what happens at the convention stays at the convention, it follows that whatever happens in the car ... well, you get the point.
The things some people will do to get home and sleep in their own bed ... and I did that night (technically, the next morning), and it was wonderful. It wasn't a decadent foreign city surrounded by 300 of my closest friends, but it was home and it was sleep and it was wonderful.
It was a week later, when we were finally unpacking the last WHC box, that I realized I had traveled across North America—to Kentucky and Canada and back—and never gotten my Aegri Somnia signed.
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasoooooooooooooooooon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Cover Artist Bio
Walter Simon was born 1971 in Allentown, PA and grew up in Toledo, OH and Hot Springs, AR. After earning a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Montevallo he went on to receive his MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Georgia. He has worked as an art instructor at the University of South Alabama since 2001 and exhibits art at the Chesser gallery in Mobile.
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Monument by Nancy Fulda
Nancy Fulda is a mother, an author, and an Editorial Associate for Baen's Universe. Visit her website at www.nancyfulda.com for more information.
The ruins are larger than they look from the freeway. Massive, oppressive. Chunks of blasted metal lie scattered like the fragments of a long forgotten eggshell, half-buried in the ruddy gray mixture of dirt and ash at my feet. My untrained eye strains to classify each piece of otherworldly engineering, reassemble them in my mind like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Here rests a mass of heat-soldered wiring and gear shafts, there a fragment that might have been an engine, but it is all so deformed and time-dusted that I cannot be sure.
"You won't find it here, ma'am."
I jump at the voice. Looking around, I spot an old man lounging like a misplaced shadow against the massive fragments. A moment after that, I realize from the outline of his hat and the dusty markings on his shirt that this is the park ranger, nearly a relic himself in the gathering darkness.
"Beg pardon?” I ask.
"What you're lookin’ for. You won't find it here.” He pushes away from the wall and heads toward me. “Folks find lots of stuff here, but never what they came lookin’ for. Five dollars, please."
I press my finger to the device in his hand and authorize the money transfer, vaguely confused. “I'm not looking for anything. Just spotted the ruins on my way home for Thanksgiving and decided to stretch my legs while the car went for gas."
The ranger waves me forward. I walk past the battered perimeter chain, onto the official monument grounds.
It is different, standing here, being here, than it is to read about it in history books or view it on a virtual tour. Sadder, somehow. Lonelier.
Dust stirs around my tennis shoes as I walk. I realize with sudden vertigo that I am tramping through their ashes, disturbing a crematorium, traversing a mass grave. I step carefully. I feel out of place here, in my cotton tee-shirt and faded traveling jeans. But looking at the voiceless totems around me, I can't think what I could have worn that would be appropriate. After all these years, we still don't know how many of them there were. We don't even know what they looked like.
Tourist panels blip as I near them, finding my pupils and offering up visual overlays of the monument's prior appearance, doling out history lessons from dust-clogged little speakers. One of them shows me footage of the original vessel tumbling in flames. A man's voice drones about moral quandaries and conflict of interest. I wave my hand irritably over the panel and it quiets.
The missiles made a kind of sense, I guess, from one perspective. World governments issued requests (in English, of course, and then later in German, French, Morse code and some mathematical construct based on prime numbers) that the ship remain in orbit. With no apparent response, with the vessel steadily dropping through the atmosphere—what options were there? Who knew what weapons of mass destruction might lie nestled in its hull? Who knew what kind of biocontamination might unintentionally leak from even the most benevolent visitors? Was it so dreadful, this small destruction that averted the chance of a greater one?