Possibilities
Edited by Alicia McCalla
“Soulless Cargo,” copyright 2012 by Balogun
“Possibilities,” copyright 2012 by L.M. Davis
“Amazon in Atlanta,” copyright 2012 by Milton Davis
“Neck Less,” copyright 2012 by Margaret Fieland
“Opening,” copyright 2012 by Edward Austin Hall
“Closing,” copyright 2012 by Edward Austin Hall
“Ouroboros Rising,” copyright 2012 by Thaddeus Howze
“Set Him Free,” copyright 2012 by Valjeanne Jeffers
“Color Blind,” copyright 2012 by Alan Jones
“The Mathematical Genius,” copyright 2012 by Alicia McCalla
“The Eternals,” copyright 2012 by Wendy Raven McNair
“The Family Circle,” copyright 2012 by Rasheedah Phillips
“The Scarlet Bracelet,” copyright 2012 by Nicole Sconiers
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For permission, contact the editor at www.AliciaMcCalla.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
Cover art copyright 2012 by Noelle Pierce www.NoellePierce.com
Interior artwork copyright 2012 by Winston Blakely BlakelyWorks.blogspot.com
Copy edited by Edward Austin Hall
Published in the United States by ffpincolor books, Atlanta, Georgia
Table Of Contents
Introduction
Opening
The Mathematical Genius
Color Blind
Possibilities
Amazon in Atlanta
The Eternals
Soulless Cargo
Ouroboros Rising
The Family Circle
Set Him Free
Neck Less
The Scarlet Bracelet
Closing
Remarks from the Editor
Contributors
Introduction
The State of Black SciFi 2012 is the brainchild of Alicia McCalla. Earlier this year McCalla, a librarian and author, extended a national call for a conversation to think and write about what it means to be a black author writing in a genre that is sometimes less than welcoming to people of color in general. And so we came--with our steamfunk and high fantasy, our sword and soul and our urban dystopias, our superheroes, aliens, and more--to begin a month-long conversation about who we are and why we write our weird stories.
In a larger sense, though, this conversation has been going on for years. As early as the nineteenth century black authors imagined stories of futures, alternative realities, and pasts in which black folks not only live but thrive and quite frequently rule. Those stories were yet another manifestation of the impulse to write ourselves and our experiences into being, not only for the past and the present that we recognize, but also for pasts that might have been, the various presents we experience, and futures that might still be.
Over the decades, more and more authors have joined the chorus, drawn to a genre defined, more than any other, by its infinite possibilities. The scope of our works and worlds broadens exponentially every day. Octavia Butler imagined a world where aliens come not as invaders but perhaps as saviors to a human race that is slowing dying because it surrounded itself with poison. L.A. Banks created a vampire mythology that traces its origins not to Eastern Europe and Transylvania but to ancient Africa (where vampire-like creatures also appear in the legendry and lore). The State of Black SciFi 2012 celebrates those contributions and the paths forged by those authors (and others) for the current generation of speculative fiction writers.
But beyond remembering the past, the State of Black SciFi 2012 imagines the future. The tremendous changes that have taken place in the publishing industry during the last decade or so have made it easier than ever before for authors to get their stories out into the world. These developments have represented a boon for authors of speculative fiction, who have frequently been at the mercy of an industry that believes there is no audience for their stories. So we also celebrate this moment for the possibilities that it represents.
In that sense, the State of Black SciFi 2012 is both a retrospective and a reckoning: a celebration of a venerable past and a pondering and strategizing for the future. #BlackSciFi2012 became a rallying cry, uniting us to create a future in which our presence in the genre, both as authors and as characters, is a given and a boon.
This anthology, appropriately titled Possibilities, represents both the culmination of #BlackSciFi2012 as well as a call for more authors, more readers, more recognition, and more … possibilities.
Do you see?
We look forward to your response.
L.M. Davis
Opening
Edward Austin Hall
We enter him/me as that fateful exchange unfolds on a shining spring day in Atlanta-Standard. He/I, sitting and reading as mother and child are strolling palely past. They are hand in hand; he/I, alone but for his/my books.
The child speaks and alters their destiny: “Look, Mama,” he says through skinny lips, “a bad peoples!”
HG lowers his book to look back. His fury is instant and complete. Or so he thinks. The mother speaks, and HG understands his mistake.
“No, see? He’s a good one. He’s reading a book.”
HG closes his book. Its title is Hermes Trismagistus and His Acolytes. He places it atop another volume, whose cover reads How to Kill. Around his wrist gleams a quicksilvery bracelet whose sudden warmth rivals that of HG’s rage-flushed face. He knows, no matter how long it takes, he must show her all the myriad ways she is mistaken.
Already, HG thinks of what he intends to visit upon this woman as a Creole lesson. And he suspects its teaching will gain him an acolyte all his own.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
The Mathematical Genius
Alicia McCalla
Sixteen-year-old Otis Clarke pulled his hoodie over his head and used his supra-athletic ability to jump over the wall that separated Bankhead and Buckhead. It was dusk and he knew it wasn’t safe, but he had to meet her. She could teach him about manipulating the math. People thought that his ability to soar, jump, and slam dunk came from his special shoes, but it really came from the mathematical genius held inside his bracelet. He just didn’t know how to connect with it. He knew that his bracelet could allow him to see the world as a sequence of equations, but he could barely manipulate them. She was going to teach him how to use his real talent.
The bracelet hummed, tingled. All of his identity was held inside. If someone stole it, they’d have everything that was him. Otis sank deeper into his hoodie. The power of his bracelet thrummed up his entire arm. He could feel the math inside his soul. He looked at the world and saw numbers. He had to know how to manipulate them better. He had to get to her.
He broke into a run. This neighborhood was dangerous. Perfectly manicured lawns with mini-mansions. They all wanted what he had. They wanted to be able to jump and slam dunk. Some of them would d
o anything to steal his identity.
“Dude, give me those shoes.”
Otis’ heart sped. He looked around and saw he was surrounded. Quick hands yanked off his hoodie. He didn’t say a word. He smashed his eyes shut and tried to manipulate the equations. Raw nerves stopped him. That’s why he needed her help. The pale faces attacked. Otis punched and kicked with bad intentions.
Pow! He elbowed a nose and watched blood splurt.
Wham! He punched and heard a jaw crunch.
There were too many! His stomach lurched.
A brick collided with the back of his head. Otis crumbled.
“Take them!” He heard in a muffled daze.
They jacked his shoes.
He saw one of them slip his size thirteens on and try to jump.
Otis laughed, hysterical. The bracelet burned. He stood up slow and studied the red spatter on his white socks. He pulled the hoodie back over his head. That’s when he saw his answer. The bracelet cooled against his brown skin. He manipulated the mathematical equations like second nature. He smiled at the suburban thieves as he jumped higher than he ever had.
He didn’t need her after all. He’d become one with the math inside the bracelet.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Color Blind
Alan Jones
As you see the world, I've been blind since birth. I see by listening. I know the truth and hear the lies, but I choose to ignore them, because to confront liars is more that I can bear.
That day started as every other day, alone and in darkness. I was walking in the woods, as I'd done countless times before, enjoying the feel of tree bark against my fingertips, of moist straw between my toes and the scent of pine in my nose. Then, suddenly, in my night there was a light. I turned my head and the light went away, but its glow still illuminated my peripheral vision, and led me to turn my head back to it. Stumbling, I made my way to the light and saw that it was in the shape of what I knew a bracelet to be. The bracelet shone in ways that let even someone blind, like me, perceive it. I slid it onto my wrist and my eyes flooded with light of every color. For the first time I saw the brown bark I'd loved all those years. I saw the green grass and knelt down to touch it. A ladybug landed on a wet blade and I saw red for the first time and I gasped. But when I looked up and saw the sky, I wept without remorse.
I wanted to tell someone, so I ran to a nearby sandwich shop. Full of brightness and luminous hues, I swung the door wide and stepped in.
In that moment of new love, my open heart sought another to love, another to breathe in. But as I looked around the café, I saw what I instinctively knew to be angry faces. Their skin was not brown like mine. Still believing, I sat at the gray counter. Several people got up and left, as others had done many times before, but this time, being sighted, I could no longer hide behind my delusions that it had nothing to do with me. Their disdain turned my happiness into an unbearable sense of being, and I ran from the counter and onto the street. With each step, every slight, every dismissal from my life cascaded down upon me like dominos, insufferable and unrelenting. I ran through the rain, back through the woods, to the river beyond and unto the bridge spanning it. My salty tears flowed into my mouth as I removed and tossed my black shades into the river. I slid off the bracelet and flung it into the waters below as well. Then I was floating, peering through aqua-tinted lenses into a world still revolving.
Truly my pain eclipses my joy, and likewise shall I too pass from light back into darkness.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Possibilities
L.M. Davis
“I have to get it out!”
The thought screams in my mind as I run, egged on by the bracelet that grips my arm as though alive. The strange, symbol-emblazoned artifact is the only thing left of home. It is my lone remaining connection to my parents.
“I have to get it out!”
The thought screeches again, followed by a piercing, searing pain between my shoulder blades. I have to find my mother, so that she can remove it. She is the only one who can. She, after all, put it there.
“It” is my baby sibling--I don’t know whether a him or a her--barely incubated and not yet ready to be born. It is the future of our kind. My mother left it with me for safekeeping, slicing my back between my shoulders with the tip of her finger and nestling the embryo within the muscle and flesh. She and my father then went to the council to try to broker peace. Can she have seen this coming? It will not last long inside me, and if it dies in me then I will die, too. I run, feeling the bracelet tugging me forward. It is leading me; to my mother, I hope.
Pain rips through my body. I shriek and almost fall to my knees, but Lueca grabs me.
“I’ve got you, AnCaela.” He says my name softly, throwing my arm around his shoulder and gripping my waist as we run on. He stays with me, through all the strange countrysides of this lonely planet. If not for him, I would be utterly alone.
The bracelet throbs, cinching tighter on my wrist.
“We’re closer, I think,” I say through teeth that are gritted against the pain. “Just ahead. Around the corner.”
We run forward, past the nondescript one-story and two-story buildings that make up the main street of this small, anonymous town. Down to the end of the block we run and then turn. There is nothing visible: only barren, endless stretches of dry, cracked ground as far as the eye can see. A mirage of death springing from nowhere.
“This is it,” I say. The bracelet almost glows around my wrist.
“But there is nothing here.”
“This is the place,” I repeat with certainty. Looking across the vacant stretch of land, I know what we must do.
We must go beneath.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
Amazon in Atlanta
Milton Davis
Her sandaled feet slapped against the brick pavement as she and her sisters crept cautiously up Peachtree Street. The Union guns rumbled in the distant north, driving the confused and weary Confederates toward the city in ragged ranks. The greycoats did not know what waited for them.
She worked the glowing bracelet around her wrist, a strange talisman that did not match her other accoutrements. She could not remember where she procured it, whether it was given to her or whether she sought it from a powerful shaman. It comforted her at that moment, just as it had during the long journey in the belly of the British man-o’-war, as it had when they stormed the docks of Savannah, and as it had when they hard marched through swamps and farmland to Atlanta. The British told them if they captured Atlanta this new land would be theirs to control.
She slipped into the darkness with her sisters and waited. Their banners appeared first, ragged red flags crisscrossed with blue bars inlaid with white stars. Dirty bearded men in tattered uniforms trudged up the road as their officers shouted encouragement from their horses. She worked her hand around the stock of her musket as she raised it to her shoulder. The strange world she’d entered months ago became familiar as she set her sight on one of the officers. This was what she was trained for; this was her destiny.
A piercing scream came from the darkness and she squeezed her trigger. Smoke blinded her for a moment; when it cleared, the horse twirled about riderless. Together she and her sisters shrieked, dropping their rifles and unleashing their machetes from their leather sheaths. They charged into the streets, barreling into the stunned soldiers; hundreds of black-skinned woman warriors attacked with unbridled fury. In moments the battle was done. But there was no time to celebrate, no time to claim trophies. The Union soldiers would not be far behind. She returned to the shadows, picked up her musket and reloaded. The bracelet felt warm against her sweating skin. This land would be theirs. This land would be New Dahomey.
Do you see?
Yes, I see.
The Eternals
Wendy Raven McNair
The Eternals looked across the divide separating their plane from the
universe and observed their newest member at play. Debate over the last world was finally over, so it was time.
“Come,” Africa called to her daughter.
The girl left her playground, crossed the divide, and settled beside her mother.
“Where?” they asked the child.
“There,” she answered, delighted.
The elder Eternals reached into the universe and made a space in which to create a new world.
“How many worlds have you witnessed?” the girl asked her mother.
“Two.”
The child looked at the bracelet embedded high upon her mother’s arm. “How long did they last?”
Africa gave a fleeting smile, conscious of the girl’s sensitivity. The Eternals were counting on the child’s lenity to correct flaws that had existed in past worlds.
“Only a blink in time, failed experiments. This world must exceed them.”
The girl watched, fascinated, as the new world took shape; a swirling mass of gas and dust became a flaming molten ball. When the crust cooled and water covered most of the surface, the girl was told her fate.
“The bracelet will make you solid. Select whatever form you wish for the new creation. After the planet has traveled sixteen times around the sun, seed it with your image then return to us.”
Sensing her daughter’s distress, Africa soothed: “Sixteen years in a blink of time is like a dust particle in the universe. Give this world … infinite possibilities.”
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