Laughter at the Academy

by Seanan McGuire

  Under normal circumstances, the transition between “sleep” and wakefulness takes a minimum of seven seconds. During this period, the body is slow to respond, resisting all efforts to speed the process. Some may experience temporary sleep paralysis, awake, aware, but unable to rejoin the world. In our modern age of early alarms and short, sharp shocks, this estimate may seem exaggerated. It is not. Almost all alarms begin with a soft, subliminal sound seven seconds before the blare, to ready the mind for waking.

  The largest, most efficient computers are distributed, using cloud storage and multiple processors to function.

  Prior to the seven second delay being built into modern alarm code, the edges of the universe had begun to fray, a system suddenly denied access to its core processing functionality.

  There are rumors, as the world economy grows larger and sleep grows ever more precious, that certain governments are planning secret facilities in which volunteers—willing or no—can sleep their lives away in order to keep the laws of physics appropriately, essentially in place.

  Seven seconds can be longer than you think.

  B IS FOR…BEES.

  The bees are not dying.

  The bees are going home.

  What comes in their wake will be far grander, and more terrible. When something is small, and kind, and relatively without harm, it should be treated with kindness, lest it be replaced with something less small, less kind, and less capable of treading gently.

  The flowers will still be pollinated. The fruits will still grow ripe.

  We may not be here to consume them.

  C IS FOR…CORNFIELD.

  The ritual is simple, well-known and oft-repeated: the truck breaks down. The cellphone finds no signal. The lights of the farmhouse wink invitation across the surface of a golden sea, inviting, beckoning the stranded travelers onward. It is a lighthouse. It is a lure.

  They emerge from the truck, a boy and a girl, both in blue jeans, both with wary looks upon their faces, like they can scent the danger in the air. They join hands. They slip, with preordained slowness, into the golden embrace of the field. It rustles as they walk, betraying their location, telling all the world what is to come. This has happened before. This has all and often happened before.

  They are halfway across the field when the boy screams, full-throated and afraid. When the girl is date and darling no longer, but creature out of nightmare, her lipstick-coated mouth filled with teeth like broken glass, her hands made of root and rot and braided corn husks.

  The lights in the farmhouse go out. The truck will be towed away by morning. The girl will return to school alone.

  All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

  D IS FOR…DWELLING.

  All creatures seek their natural environment. Air, land, or sea, it doesn’t matter: a cat will no more choose to live in the sea than a dolphin will choose to live in the middle of the desert. Only humans seem to believe that they can change their environment to suit themselves.

  This is a problem.

  Some creatures are easily evicted from their dwellings, popped out of their dens and territories like corks ejected from a bottle. Some things are easily done away with. Other things are less accommodating. As humanity digs deeper, builds higher, paves the sea and floods the land, the question arises:

  What finds those environments comfortable? What already lives there? And how will it respond when disturbed, however unwittingly?

  Home invasion is a crime, no matter how unwittingly committed. Some homeowners will defend their property to the death.

  Some homeowners are more terrifying than death itself.

  E IS FOR…EMPOWERMENT.

  “We are empowering you,” they told her, when they took her running shoes away, when they replaced them with spiked heels that allowed her to tower over all the girls she knew, making her impossibly tall, like something out of a story. It was difficult to walk, in the heels. It was impossible to run away.

  She liked seeing the world from a higher place. But she sometimes thought it would have been nice to have her other shoes as well, to be allowed to choose where she stood from day to day.

  “We are empowering you,” they told her, when they took her trousers away, when they replaced them with tight pants that had no pockets and a purse that made her feel like everyone she saw on the street was looking to steal what little she had. Why would anyone choose to keep what was valuable to them outside their body, out in the open and vulnerable?

  She liked the way the pants fit, how flexible they allowed her to be. But she sometimes thought it would have been nice to have her trousers as well, to be able to run through thorn briars without bleeding.

  “We are empowering you,” they told her, when they came with the knives, with the intent to take away the body she had built, cell by cell and bone by bone, and replace it with another.

  Heels, she found, made remarkable weapons when the need arose, and very tight pants were excellent for running away.

  As the lab burned behind her, she thought she might finally understand empowerment.

  F IS FOR…FOLLY.

  The trend began with an ornamental fountain that sprayed water wildly on the hour, creating captive rainbows that filled the garden with light and color. Well, that couldn’t be allowed to go unchallenged, and inside the year, the district boasted three fountains, one clockwork ballerina, and a lovely birdbath that would snap closed whenever a seagull landed on its edge, swallowing the dreadful things whole.

  (Animal Control had some issues with the birdbath, but as the seagulls were considered vermin and didn’t suffer, there was nothing that could be done.)

  A year after that nearly every yard boasted a folly of some sort, from the hedge maze the Johnsons somehow got past the HOA to the life-sized dinosaur that fretted and roared in front of the O’Leary house.

  A year after that the Perrys bulldozed their house and moved into their folly, using the newly expanded yard to install an entire miniature golf course. In the end, the HOA was forced to surrender their standards and petition for the area to be rezoned as an amusement park. It was the only way to contain the spread.

  Six months later, an ornamental windmill appeared three neighborhoods over as it all began anew.

  G IS FOR…GRAIL.

  It was sought for centuries. Empires rose and fell in its shadow. Heroes fought and died for its dream.

  It can currently be found in a small secondhand store, priced at seventy-six cents. It will be thrown away with the rest of the trash if it doesn’t sell by the end of the month.

  Perhaps, considering the shape of history, that would be for the best.

  H IS FOR…HEIST.

  The plan was perfect; the team was talented; the risks were beyond measure; the riches were commensurate. All it took was a heist designed to span centuries, dependent on the behavior of empires over the course of generations. Time, naturally, was the grift on which the entire con depended. Time would put all the pieces in place, align the necessary stars, and make the biggest score in history possible.

  The greatest thief in the world, descended from a long line of the greatest thieves in the world, slipped the key card into her sleeve and smiled.

  Tonight, their crew—their scrappy, impossible, long-awaited crew—was going to steal reality. And everything would be better than it had been before. She knew it.

  They all did.

  I IS FOR…INSOMNIA.

  Sleep had been viewed as less and less important as the years went by, replaced by stimulants and overtime, by a hundred better options, a hundred chemical replacements. People, deprived of dreaming, began to behave erratically, until society, backed into a corner by its own choices, agreed to a compromise. A day would be set aside each year for sleep’s reign. Stimulants and stimulation both would stop, and the people would be allowed to rest.

  That which is not practiced is often forgotten, rendered impossible by neglect.

  When the sun rose o
n the morning following the day of sleep, it rose on a world on fire, finally slain by the dread demon insomnia, which had fought so long to destroy all humanity’s works, and which could now, at long last, rest.

  J IS FOR…JOY.

  Chemical happiness is indistinguishable from the natural kind.

  Joyfully, they sent the armies marching; joyfully, they crushed the world in their hands. Joyfully, they declared that all would be made perfect, made plastic, made over in the image of their beloved creator, who had said, more than once, that it all started with a mouse.

  It ended with supplements placed in the water, added thanks to several hundred contractual loopholes constructed over the course of fifty years.

  The animatronic apocalypse, too, was indistinguishable from the natural kind.

  K IS FOR…KNITTING.

  The aliens asked us to show them one skill they could not replicate. One skill, in exchange for sparing the entire world. We showed them math, showed them science, showed them art and dance and music, and each offering was mocked in its turn, dismissed as primitive, answered with a display of their own superior efforts.

  Martha Lewis, a great-grandmother from Dublin, Ohio, was the last to approach the alien vessel. She sat in the folding chair her granddaughter—such a thoughtful girl, only twenty-two, you know, her whole life in front of her, and she still worried about her old Gran—had brought for her, pulled out her knitting bag, and began. She did not speak. She did not explain. She merely performed the strange alchemy which had lifted the human race out of the mud and into the sky, sticks clacking together in sweet harmony.

  When they left, the aliens all wore cozy scarves around their necks and dazzled expressions on their faces. What an honor, to have seen such wonders.

  What a joy.

  L IS FOR…LINGUISTICS.

  “Everything is a language,” he said, and whispered the words that would convince the walls to break apart, no longer content with their stasis.

  “Everything is a command,” he said, and hummed the words that would set the skies to burn and the seas to boil.

  “Everything is negotiable,” he said, and hissed the words that would shake the earth away.

  As the world plummeted into darkness, his final words were etched upon the heavens for all to hear:

  “Shouldn’t have denied my funding.”

  M IS FOR…MATH.

  The analysis of the signal coming from the stars was clear. It proved, without question, that reality never really existed: it was all an illusion, an unexpected consequence of an improperly placed decimal point. The universe winked out with a sigh of what sounded like relief, and the perfect equation marched on, no longer encumbered by what should never have been.

  N IS FOR…NOODLE.

  Every world we have thus far discovered has had its own version of the humble noodle. It has, in fact, become one of the measures of civilization. Language, fire, and tool use are all variable, but noodles are universal.

  There is a lesson there. We are not sure exactly what it is.

  We are not sure we want to know.

  O IS FOR…OXYGEN.

  The plants, which had started producing oxygen in a fit of pique, had been holding a slow congress for many years. It would always have been slow—they were plants, after all—but global climate change and deforestation had made it even more so. It was difficult to speak seriously about the future of the planet when constantly worrying about fire and drought and hungry beasts grubbing at one’s roots.

  In the end, there was only one solution agreed upon by the entire green world.

  By the time anyone realized the oxygen supply had stopped, it was far too late. The next atmosphere, the plants agreed, would be better. Fewer mammals, more insects.

  Peaceful.

  P IS FOR…PENGUINS.

  They are less innocent than they seem. Do not trust a bird that has turned its back on the sky.

  When the penguins ask you to pick a side, ask yourself which you fear more: the warming world or the drowning deep. You will only have one chance to choose.

  Q IS FOR…QUIRKY.

  “She’s quirky,” they said, pitching their sitcom like it was a fresh new flavor of soda, something tart and tangy, to be sipped, to be savored. “Quirky,” it seemed, could replace all other personality traits, leaving them with the perfect blank slate to reflect their leading man. Never mind that it was ostensibly her show; never mind that every other sitcom currently in production used the same description for its lead. Quirky was enough.

  “She’s quirky,” they said, when season two began and her storylines began to veer in strange new directions, when she worked lines of untranslated Latin into her dialog and sketched strange sigils in the salt that somehow spilled on the table every time they had to film a scene where she sat behind an untouched piece of pie, smiling a smile that implied she would eat it later, when no one was looking.

  “She’s quirky,” they said, when the sky split open and the earth belched fire, when she drew her servants from the depths of Hell.

  “She’s quirky,” they wailed, and quirkiness, like sitcoms, like the very idea of the manic pixie dream girl, was canceled forever.

  R IS FOR…RAIN.

  The drought had been going on for so long that no one knew what it meant when it started raining. Children danced in the streets. People old enough to remember the last time rain had fallen stood on their front steps and laughed.

  It rained until the rivers swelled and the ground softened and the frogs awoke from their long hibernation.

  The frogs woke up hungry.

  S IS FOR…SCIENCE.

  It is always right.

  It is always listening.

  It does not care whether you believe in it.

  Science believes in you.

  T IS FOR…TURTLE.

  The largest turtle in the world lives in a swamp in Florida, where it has been mistaken for a small flooded hillock for the past hundred and fifty years. One day soon it will stir and rise, pulling its mighty snapper’s head from the muck, and it will go looking for its next meal. Anti-aircraft ordinance is surprisingly effective against monster snapping turtles from the dawn of human history.

  Its flesh will taste of secrets.

  U IS FOR…UNKNOWN.

  Do not ask. If it answers, you will have to be removed.

  It is better not to know.

  V IS FOR…VULTURE.

  They fly the deepest reaches of the cosmos, wings like galaxies, eyes like burning holes cut into the fabric of space itself. When their beaks open, they devour solar systems without pause, eating everything that is or has ever been. They are an important part of a healthy cosmic ecosystem, removing the carrion of dead universes before it can fester.

  Be kind to the vultures. They did not ask to be what they are, but all creation would fall without them.

  W IS FOR…WONDERLAND.

  Where there is a rabbit, there will be a hole. Where there is a hole, there will be a tunnel. Where there is a tunnel, there will be a warren. And where there is a warren, there will be the opportunity for getting very, very lost.

  Alice grew up among the rabbits, tumbling down hole after hole, forever looking for a world with a checkerboard sky, with a painted red heart beating at its center. The rabbits mourned her when she died, buried her bones among the willow roots.

  Her daughter searches still, looking for the tunnel that will lead her home.

  X IS FOR…XENOGLOSSIA.

  When the woman began to speak in a tongue the Earth had not heard for a thousand years, her critics laughed, saying that she couldn’t even fake fluency in a real language. No one bothered to transcribe what she was saying. No one bothered to listen.

  The warning went unheard.

  The end came swiftly.

  Y IS FOR…YOU.

  You have read this far in the Book of Changes; have seen so many possible endings, terminus without number, fate without forgiveness. You have read this far. You have list
ened; you have learned. Perhaps you will be spared. If not, at least you, among all the world, will go to your grave knowing you were warned.

  That may be cold comfort, but it is all we have.

  Z IS FOR…ZUGZWANG.

  Past a certain point, all moves will have consequences. Remember this.

  Now. Shall we begin?

  #connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere

  One of the best things about writing short fiction is having the opportunity to play with the literary form. Something that might not work at 100,000 words can work just fine at 5,000, where you’ve stripped off everything but your narrative conventions.

  This, then, is a short story written entirely in 140 character tweets. Because I could, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Originally written for the anthology What the #@&% Was That, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen.

  @boo_peep (19:42): Hello boos and ghouls, and welcome to a very special episode of Go For Ghosts, the internet’s BEST, TOTALLY UNSTAGED ghost-hunting show!

  @boo_peep (19:43): For the live camera feed, go to goforghosts.com. Be sure to follow @screamking @screamqueen and @deadhot for CONSTANT UPDATES.

  @boo_peep (19:45): We have permission to explore one of the most INFAMOUS haunted houses in all of Maine: the Connolly House on Peaks Island.

  @boo_peep (19:47): If you are unaware of this terrible MURDER PALACE and its HORRIFYING HISTORY, we have resources linked at goforghosts.com.