Lightspeed Magazine - October 2016

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  Still running, the woman caught up to Quinx, grabbing the priest by the arms. She continued to sprint toward Morgan and Goins, carrying the shuddering Quinx over one shoulder. Instead of plowing into them, she pulled up short, her breath a bellows.

  “Show me the Chariot,” she demanded. Her voice was a deep, threatening growl. Behind her, the monk arose and stumbled toward them.

  “Who are you to ask?” Goins asked.

  “A Machinist.” Her voice was a growl. “This is my future. The future of my faith.”

  “The past,” Morgan said, correcting her. “The future is coming in the sky.”

  Behind them, the mottled wall whirred. He turned to see a section slide upward to create an opening. Faint crimson light glowed beyond. The airship crashed in the distance with another whoosh of flame and heat.

  The Machinist continued to stare them both down. “My lover is dead, as is my captain. You allowed them to die. You owe me this.”

  The monk caught up to her, tackling her from behind with his hands spread wide to catch her eyes and the edges of her mouth. The woman dropped Quinx, who bit off a scream as he hit. Then she bent to seize the monk and wrestle him to the ground in front of her.

  He bounced up, obviously rattled, but ready to engage. Goins tugged Morgan’s arm. “Back,” he hissed. “This is not our fight.”

  “None of this is my fight,” Morgan growled.

  Goins tapped the wall of the Increate’s Chariot. “This is one of eight aetheric ships here on Earth. You have found their origin, the great ship that is their mother. You were right all along. Do you now doubt that our history is coming home in the sky, from your libration point?”

  “No, I do not doubt.” Behind them, a screech. The monk and the Machinist were circling dangerously as Quinx staggered to his feet.

  Strangely, Goins was ignoring the battle, focusing his entire attention on Morgan. That in turn drew Morgan’s gaze back to the judge. For all his curiosity, he was terribly loath to step within. He hadn’t wished to be this right, to confront the meaning of his discovery so personally. “But I did not summon it.”

  “Then who did?” the judge asked impatiently.

  That, in a moment of inspiration he could answer. “All of us. With our telelocutors and our airships and our engines, sending rays of energy into the aether as surely as if we’d lit a bonfire in the night. If this Chariot knows enough to defend itself, doubtless the mother ship can watch our Earth for us to rise high enough to see it in return. We have had electrickifcation for a generation. It can see that.”

  With a flicker of his eyes, Goins drew a gun of his own and shot past Morgan in one motion. Startled, Morgan turned to see the monk falling to the ground, his face bloody. The woman was on her hands and knees. Quinx lurched slowly toward the two of them with a slightly unfocused look on his face.

  The Presiding Judge handed the pistol to Morgan. “You choose. The past, or the future.”

  Morgan promptly dropped the weapon into the grass. He’d wanted the truth, by the Increate, not such a mess of power and violence. “I am a scientist. I do not have people thrown off cliffs.”

  Quinx reached for Morgan’s hand. “Ninety Nine,” he gasped. “Brother Kurts. Please … Stop it. You didn’t need to do this.”

  The Machinist shuddered to her feet. One eyeball was gouged loose, and her mouth bled. Morgan glanced at the dying monk and wondered just how tough a human being could be.

  Her eyes were no longer mad. Instead, they were haunted. “Stop,” she said, echoing Quinx’ words.

  “Go,” Morgan replied. He had just lately learned the measure of his own courage, and was not sure he could step into the chariot himself. “Go into the future. It cannot be stopped. The stars do not lie, and they are coming toward us.”

  “They are my stars.” She stared at them with her remaining eye. “Ours. Not yours.”

  The woman stumbled weeping through the opened door. Quinx turned away from Morgan. “It cannot be,” the priest gasped. “I must go where Ion has already led.” Face twisted in some inner agony of the spirit, he followed after her.

  “And you?” asked Goins. “Do you choose the future as well?”

  Afraid, he stood unmoving a moment. Then: “I would have thought to …” The doctor’s words ran out as he marshaled his thoughts. “No. I’ve come to understand that the future is here with us. Whatever comes, comes.”

  • • • •

  Morgan Abutti looked up at the smoke trailing into the blue sky from the ruined airship. Goins squatted next to him, pistol still in hand. The door into the Chariot had slid shut.

  “What next?” the scientist asked.

  “Surely the Increate knows,” said Goins.

  “Quinx would have said that the Increate knows all.” Morgan thought about those words. “It seems to me that They do not think to warn us of the truth.”

  The remaining Thalassocretes gathered around. Some tended the wounded and the dead, others discussed the advisability of sending a party to look into the crash of the airship.

  The Chariot began to whine, a low hum that built slowly in volume. Goins rose, gestured for a general retreat. It seemed wisest.

  Morgan was slow to move, staring at the chance of greatness that he’d abandoned. He was the first to see the Chariot break from the trees and rise into the sky. The rest stopped to watch as clouds of dust and steam spiraled beneath it.

  “Good luck, Revered Quinx,” muttered the doctor.

  Goins tugged at his arm. “The choices are made. You were correct. We must go.”

  “You have it almost right,” said Morgan. “His choices are ended. Ours are just begun.” His courage returned to him once more, like a whipped dog coming home. “This is what I get for uncovering the truth. What I had declined to see clearly before. There are great consequences to be accounted for.” He glanced away from the departing chariot. “Are you ready to face those, Judge? I am.”

  “Remember, your aetheric vessel was coming anyway, whether or not you had seen it first. You did not cause this.” Goins paused a moment, searching Morgan’s face as if for some truth. “Science finds the path where the light of faith has shown the way.”

  Morgan could not tell if the judge meant to be ironic or not. That did not matter. He patted the other man’s shoulder. “Let us go, then. There is work to be done.”

  Above them, the future rose ever higher, shedding six thousand years of mud and plants and tradition as it climbed to meet the oncoming stars.

  © 2012 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr., writing as Jay Lake. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of Mary Elizabeth Lake, Trustee Lake Family Trust.

  *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jay Lake was a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. He lived in Portland, Oregon and lost a six year battle with colon cancer on June 1, 2014. Jay was a prolific writer and editor and blogged regularly about his cancer at his website jlake.com. He was well known for his novels featuring the character Green (Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura, published by Tor Books) as well as several other novels and collections. His final collection The Last Plane to Heaven was released by Tor Books in 2014. His work has been translated into several languages including Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian.

  *

  EXCERPT: Faller (Tor Books)

  Will McIntosh | 1397 words

  1

  He tried to open his eyes, but they felt glued shut, so he just lay there, exhausted, listening to the screams. His cheek was against a hard surface, pebbles pressed into his skin. A dog barked nearby.

  Dog. The word burst in his mind, fresh, like he was giving birth to it. Yet, he knew what a dog was. When he thought the word, a picture formed. Four-legged animal, fur, wagging tail.

  His mind felt slightly clearer, his energy returning. He dragged his eyes open.

  The world was incredibly brig
ht, remarkably colorful. Someone ran by in green and white sneakers, sideways, as if running on a wall. Except he was the one who was sideways.

  As he managed to sit upright, the world tilted and spun for a moment before settling into crisp focus. He was surrounded by tall buildings; cars and trucks were scattered on a street. None were moving. Thick black smoke rose from behind the closest buildings.

  A few feet away a pink-haired woman was doubled over, clutching her head in her hands. There were colorful tattoos of flowers on her forearms.

  “What is happening?” she wailed.

  “I don’t know.”

  The woman looked up, startled. “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?”

  “No. Do you know who I am?”

  The woman shook her head.

  Something had happened. The confusion he felt, the screaming, this wasn’t normal. He needed to figure out what was going on. Maybe he could find help. Police.

  When he pressed his palm to the pavement to try to stand, lancing pain shot down his thumb and into his wrist. There was a deep slash across the pad of the thumb, caked with dried blood. There was more dried blood on the tip of his index finger and under the fingernail. This must have happened before, he realized.

  Still shaky, he stood, looked around. There was a little silver cart with a yellow umbrella nearby. The word for it sprang to mind: hot-dog stand. A red and white bus sat parked along the curb. A few blocks away, a cluster of people stood with their backs to him.

  He went to see what they were doing.

  There were no buildings beyond the place where the crowd was standing. The sky grew wider as he approached, until he merged into the crowd and saw that the world simply ended a few feet from where they stood.

  There was nothing beyond but sky.

  Ragged asphalt and concrete marked the edge of the world. A concrete sewer pipe jutted from the dark earth below, spewing water.

  He couldn’t say how, but he sensed this, too, was wrong. The sky felt too big, although he knew skies were enormous.

  A white-haired man knelt off to one side of the crowd on a stoop that led up to thin air. He was studying a small photograph, the contents of a wallet spread beside him. The old man looked up as he approached, held the photo up for him to see. It showed the man in a black suit, smiling, clutching an old woman’s hand.

  “I found this in my pocket. They must be people I know.”

  It took him a moment to realize the old guy didn’t know he was one of the people in the photo.

  “That’s you,” he said, pointing.

  “That’s me?” The old man held the photo closer, studied it. “That’s me.” He sounded surprised.

  He wondered if there was anything in his own pockets. Checking the front ones first, he pulled out a folded food wrapper and a toy soldier.

  There was a photo in one of his back pockets: a dark-haired woman with freckles, grinning, hugging a round-faced, sandy-haired man. They looked happier than anyone could possibly look.

  He showed the picture to the old man, who pointed. “That’s you.”

  He studied the man in the picture. How could that face be his? It was a stranger’s face. He preferred looking at the woman. She had bright, intelligent green eyes that looked ever so slightly crossed, arms like flamingo legs.

  He scanned the faces in the nearby crowd, hoping to spot the woman among them. His gaze paused on an old woman, hands buried in the pockets of a black sweater, standing at the edge of the crowd. He glanced at the picture in the old man’s lap.

  “Hey, there she is.”

  The old man stood, squinted into the crowd. “Where?”

  “There.” He grasped the man by the elbow, led him to the woman. She turned as they approached, her eyebrows pinched.

  The old man studied the photo, looked at the woman, studied the photo again. He held the photo up so the woman could see it. “I think that’s you in the photo. With me.”

  Relief spread across the woman’s face. “Do you know me?”

  “I don’t,” the old man admitted. “But we must be something to each other, don’t you think? In the picture we’re holding hands.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She touched her face. “Am I dead? Is that it?”

  “I don’t think we’re dead. No,” the old guy said.

  He was glad these people had found each other. He wished he could find the woman in his photo, so they could face whatever was happening together.

  “I’m going to look for this woman.” He held up his photo.

  The old man nodded. “Thank you. I won’t forget the kindness you showed a total stranger.”

  As he set off along the edge, he took a closer look at the other things in his pocket. The thumb-sized green toy soldier was connected to a toy parachute by a half-dozen threads.

  As he opened the folded-up food wrapper, he stopped walking. There was something drawn on the back in rusty brown, the crude shapes smeared and splotched. A series of ovals ran down the length of the page, with an X over the bottom one. He moved his thumb, which was obscuring a second image in the bottom right-hand corner of the page: a triangle with two numerals in it—a one, followed by a three.

  He studied the dried blood caking his thumb, set it beside one of the shapes. It was the same rust color as the writing. He’d cut his thumb and scrawled those ovals on the food wrapper with his own blood, then put it in his pocket. He’d left a message to himself. If he’d sliced open his thumb to write it, he must have known something was about to happen, and the message must be important.

  He studied the ovals, the triangle with the numerals inside, and tried to make sense of them, but it meant nothing to him. Carefully folding the wrapper, he put it back in his pocket and walked on.

  Crowds were gathered along the edge on every street. He searched the faces, seeking the dark-haired woman.

  The crowds thinned with each block, and eventually he came upon a deserted, ruined part of the world. Only a few buildings stood; the rest had been reduced to piles of steel and concrete. Wading through the wreckage, he picked up blackened bricks, melted electronics. Vehicles had been crushed flat, fires had raged. There were no bodies, at least none he could see, and no smoke, so the destruction wasn’t recent.

  Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, he squatted, closed his eyes. He was in serious trouble. All of them were. But he didn’t understand the trouble; nothing made sense, none of it fit together.

  What was there to do but keep looking, both for the woman in the picture and for answers? He moved on, staying close to the edge.

  • • • •

  Hungry, his throat dry, he found himself back where he’d started.

  The world was a circle, and smaller than he’d imagined.

  Most of the crowd was gone, including the man and woman he’d reunited. They’d all no doubt gone to find food and a place to sleep. He decided he’d better do the same.

  Copyright © 2016 by Will McIntosh. Excerpted from Faller by Will McIntosh. Published by permission of the author and Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Will McIntosh’s story, Defenders, was the basis for a novel published by Orbit books in 2014, and was recently optioned for film. Will’s third novel, Love Minus Eighty, was based on the Hugo Award winning short story, Bridesicle. His debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for both a Locus award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Will lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife Alison and twins Hannah and Miles. He teaches psychology as an adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary, after leaving his career as a psychology professor in southeast Georgia to write full time.

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  Media Review: 12 MONKEYS and MR. ROBOT

  Christopher East | 1733 words

  The real world may seem increasingly dystopian lately, but that doesn’t seem to have quenched ou
r thirst for dystopian visions. Two current shows—one that reaches into the cinematic past, the other straight into the modern zeitgeist—are leveraging the science fictional furniture of dystopia to powerful, if decidedly different, effect.

  Based on the visionary 1995 Terry Gilliam film, Syfy’s 12 Monkeys may seem like a curious property to adapt for episodic TV, but it’s surprisingly good. Certainly the initial premise is topical; the idea that scientists from the future, trying to prevent a global disaster, would target our present … well, sounds like plausible timing to me! The initial focus is on James Cole (Aaron Stanton), a test subject from 2044 who is sent back to 2015, his mission to prevent a deadly, global epidemic from starting. But he’ll need help from a temporal local: Dr. Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull), a renowned virologist whose messages to the future, according to Cole, directly led to his mission. Together, they face off against the Army of the 12 Monkeys, a mysterious underground group that’s conspiring to bring about the end of the world. But how, and why? Together Cole and Cassie need to find out, and stop it.

  For anyone familiar with the film, 12 Monkeys the series starts off in fairly expected ways, and suffers a bit from the comparison. Even at his darkest, Terry Gilliam is a playful and striking director, and an infectious visual energy infuses his film; by contrast, the series opens in gritty and bleak fashion, looking initially like a poor man’s remake. Stanton’s gruff rogue act is competent and Schull is credible, but both are one-note in the early going, and in terms of charisma, they’re no match for Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe—a comparison that’s hard not to make if you remember the film fondly. (Similarly but less distractingly, Emily Hampshire struggles to match Brad Pitt’s nutzoid energy as the crucial plot figure Goines, here refreshingly gender-swapped.)

  Fortunately these touchstone comparisons matter less and less as the series progresses and, more importantly, deviates from the source material. The actors find their voices, the characters come into their own, and a nice ensemble feel develops. The first hint of potential greatness comes from Kirk Acevedo, who plays Cole’s best friend José Ramse. Initially a minor character, Ramse’s screentime gradually increases; as the characters play God with the universe, he starts to serve as the show’s conscience, if not the key to the show’s later, thematic exploration of causality and fate. Acevedo is light years ahead of the rest of the cast in terms of sheer screen presence, so much so that I spent the first several episodes baffled that he wasn’t the lead. Fortunately, once the show realizes Acevedo’s value, he becomes more central, first in a charming Cole-Ramse bromance, and later as a key figure in its time-bending season arcs.